Blood Wedding (2025)
Background
Federico García Lorca’s plays inherently have music written into them; because of this, the design of this show drew most inspiration from the text itself, the history of Spain during the 1920s-30s, and the music of Spain at this time.
However, this adaptation of Blood Wedding very much leaned into the magical realism elements of the play, relying on audio to transport the audience into realms further detached from our own realities.
Inspiration
The design of this show aimed to blend the sounds of traditional Spain with almost sci-fi magical elements, blending an old world with a new.
Most compositions in this production were live and played on a cajón drum. Different characters became associated with different emotions that drove the story forward. For the sound design of the show, these important emotional characters were assigned different rhythmic compositions, which then would appear throughout transitions or underscore moments of dialogue. For example, Leonardo was often associated with the sound of his horse in the script (these moments usually signifying danger). For the design, a rhythmic horse hoof composition on the cajón drum became his sonic motif, signifying to the audience that danger was imminent.
Alongside underscores and motifs, two songs appear in Blood Wedding, both of which were original compositions sung only alongside rhythmic accompaniment of the cajón, drawing inspiration from Spanish melodies and rhythms of women in mourning.
The digital compositions of the production underscored transitions between acts. In order to convey the magical realism of Blood Wedding, this production relied heavily on these transition scores to introduce foreign, more modern-sounding sonic textures into the space to convey that the world of the play was not the same as the world of the audience.
Act 3 was the only part of the show that had a constant soundscape present. The goal was to create a background that not only conveyed ambiance but also would create a stark contrast once the sound was taken away to emphasize the silence after the death of two characters. This sound ran for about 20 minutes in total. The design repeated the melody from one of the live songs in a previous act (which detailed warning and danger) and modulated it through synths with a reverb arpeggio effect in LogicPro.