DARRON L WEST, SOUND DESIGN For the Sound Design of Into the Woods, the early discussions of how we were going to re-imagine it centered around the desire to make a chamber piece, but would utilize simple storytelling with only the things we absolutely needed to tell our story and to have the company of actors provide all the sound effects and music in the show. In the early creative stages, the rehearsal hall was filled with things you might find in your grandmother’s attic or an old, dusty music store. Piles of instruments and odd things that make noise were scattered around the room. The instruments and items that appear on stage in the production are the ones that made the cut from the early days of rehearsals. Many of the actors are also musicians, so Into the Woods has been re-scored using mostly portable instruments. The entire score is performed with piano, guitar, cello, banjo, toy piano, bassoon, bells, autoharp, and French horn. Even “Little Red,” Emily Young, dusted off her trumpet to have on hand for the princes’ fanfare moments in the show. As rehearsals progressed, it was clear that we needed a textured tonal instrument to assist in the Witch’s magic moments. So I brought my water-phone into rehearsal, which


became a major element for the magic sounds throughout the production. It’s a beautiful handmade brass instrument with metal tines attached to a brass bowl that is filled with water, and the tines are bowed like a violin. Along with the traditional instruments, there are a countless number of sound effect makers manipulated by the cast in the show: coconut halves (for the princes’ horses’ hooves, of course), various small whistles, and water pipes for the bird sounds you hear as they advise Cinderella in the story. From the start, we knew that the piano would be the major musical element driving the production, and the piano score of Into the Woods is very lush on its own. Not to mention the extraordinary arrangements that Matt Castle did with the cast. Even the set on stage is a giant instrument and played frequently during the production. The giant piano harp walls have been rigged with contact microphones that pick up the vibration of the strings and, during the show, the strings of the harp walls are struck with any manor of things: mallets, drumsticks, metal pipes, guitar picks, sticks and even the actors’ elbows. A fun fact about the piano harp walls is that on average it takes close to seven hours to complete the tuning before our technical rehearsals can even begin.


INTO THE WOODS UPSTAGE GUIDE


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