DAY 031 – DESIGNING DANGEROUSLY

Intuition and Analysis

We have this habit--myself included--of completely forgetting everything practical we know about human nature when we read a play. In our work-a-day lives, we are constantly clocking people, dissecting both what they say and how they say it. We turn the surgery upon ourselves as well. If you’re anything like me, you can replay a moment where you’ve felt misinterpreted or disconnected somehow. 

We use both intuition and analysis when we see someone walking down the street. Is the person twitchy, are they talking to themselves, how are they dressed, how are they interacting with other people? What is their stride like? What are their eyes doing? Is their hair groomed? We take all this in in an instant. Now, we have to be careful--this is where unconscious bias or prejudice can creep in, so we have to allow ourselves to be surprised, to be changed. The person content in their bias won’t look for contradictory information, but the curious, present person will sponge up everything, never drawing a final, immutable conclusion.

However, there’s this crazy gap when we get to a page of dialog. What is the character saying? What are they not saying? Mind you, we don’t have the physicality, the non-verbal cues in a play, so it’s an unfinished picture, the boundaries sketched out, but no flesh on the bones. This is why first read throughs and designer runs are the most creatively profitable times for me as a sound designer. Hearing the words spoken by the actor and then the roles inhabited by the cast provides all that extra information. I’ve had productions where I’ve had a visceral reaction at each of these moments: my first read, cast first readthrough, designer run. I’ve also had productions where I’ve only wept reading it on the page, or only in designer run, or often not at all. That in and of itself should not be the litmus test, but it does provide information, doesn’t it?