The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
The Gift Theatre (Sep 2023)
Playwright: Jim Cartwright
Directors: Devon DeMayo & Peter Anderson
Scenic Design: Hannah Clark
Costume Design: kClare McKellaston
Lighting Design: Gabrielle Strong
Sound Design & Original Music: Forrest Gregor
Properties Design: Lilly Berman
Dialect Director: Adam Goldstein
Intimacy Director: Courtney Abbott
Stage Management: Sarah Luse
Blown fuses, real and metaphorical, punctuate the action with flashes of pent up energy in this acclaimed play. The diminutive heroine frequently plunges the dilapidated house she shares with her alcoholic mother into darkness by playing her dead father’s records at a volume matched only by the soulful power of her vocal impressions. Little Voice has a hidden talent: she can emulate every chanteuse from Judy Garland to Edith Piaf. She hides in her room, crooning and dreaming of love, while her disheveled mother mistakes a seedy agent’s interest as affection rather than enthusiasm for the gold mine buried in her daughter’s throat. This is an engaging fairy tale of despair, love and finally hope as LV finds a voice of her own.
Andy Warhol in Iran
Northlight Theatre (Jan 2023)
Playwright: Brent Askari
Director: BJ Powers
Scenic Design: Todd Rosenthal
Costume Design: Izumi Inaba
Lighting Design: Heather Gilbert
Sound Design: Forrest Gregor & Andre Pluess
Projection Design: Mike Tutaj
Wig & Makeup Design: Natalia Castilla
Stage Management: Rita Veerland
In 1976, the artist Andy Warhol, having re-invented himself as the portrait painter of the rich and famous, travels to Tehran to take Polaroids of the Shah of Iran’s wife. Amidst taking in the Crown Jewels and ordering room service caviar, Warhol encounters a young revolutionary who throws his plans into turmoil, and opens the pop icon’s eyes to a world beyond himself.
For this design the main elements were these fourth wall breaking moments when either Andy or Farhad addressed the audience. The main sonic idea for these moments was to support the creation of a liminal space and to reflect the background both characters were coming from.
The Chinese Lady
TimeLine Theatre Company (May 2022)
Playwright: Lloyd Suh
Director: Helen Young
Scenic Design: Arnel Sancianco
Costume Design: Izumi Inaba
Lighting Design: John Culbert
Sound Design & Original Music: Forrest Gregor & Andre Pluess
Properties Design: Rowan Doe
Dialect Director: Eva Breneman
Dramaturgy: Yiwen Wu
Stage Management: Jill Yetsky
In 1834 Afong Moy is brought to America by the Carnes Brothers and becomes the first Chinese woman to set foot in America, she is only 14 years old. She was put on display as side show to promote the sale of Chinese goods and is toured around the country. This play follows her journey across America and gives us glimpses into what her life might have been like.
For the music in The Chinese Lady we wanted to have the play start with more traditional Chinese instrumentation and ideas and then as the play progresses, shift into more of a western vocabulary, all while staying away from any specific time periods to keep a sense of timelessness.
Peerless
The Theatre School at DePaul University (Nov 2022)
Playwright: Jihae Park
Director: Helen Young
Scenic Design: Saskia Bakker
Costume Design: Finnegan Chu
Lighting Design: Aidan McLeod
Sound Design & Original Music: Forrest Gregor
Dramaturgy: Isabell Cheng
Stage Management: Leiny Vega
In this modern adaptation of Macbeth twins M and L have a plan to ensure they both get in to “The College.” Set at a midwestern high school the play follows the pair as their plan unfolds.
The music I composed for Peerless centers around distorted synth sounds, contemporary string articulations and female vocal textures. As the show progresses the sounds and music evolve to keep pace with the events of the play as they transpire.
Crave
DES 642 Theatrical Collaboration (Winter 2021)
Playwright: Sarah Kane
Professor: Azar Kazami
Director: Gabriella Suarez
Scenic Design: Leiny Vega
Costume Design: Kat Hasanov
Lighting Design: Brian Gallagher
Sound Design: Forrest Gregor
Stage Management: Rachel Silvers
For this project our class was divided into groups to collaborate and develop designs for our own hypothetical production of Sarah Kane’s Crave. Our final for the class was to present a “first rehearsal presentation” of our production for the rest of the class.
After reading and discussing the play I was inspired by the experimental sounds of composers like John Cage, and the industrial sounds of artists like clipping. In the three cues I created to present I sampled clipping.’s DREAM REMX.
Sound Design II
DES 309 (Winter 2022)
Professor: Jeffrey Levin
This class focused on composition for film and theatre. We looked at multiple film and video game composers and learned how to emulate various styles of music in our own compositions. Specifically we looked at Hildur Guðnadóttir, Johnny Greenwood, Jeff Russo, Thomas Newman, Lena Raine, and Hans Zimmer, and chose a piece they had composed to be the inspiration for a 1-2 minute composition of our own.