“Reverberation is a beautiful play about love, loneliness and connection” | Sound Designer Nicola T. Chang
2 Oct 2024
Reverberation Sound Designer & Composer Nicola T. Chang is an award-winning composer/sound designer for stage and screen.
She has written music for the three Olivier-nominated plays: For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, The Swell, and A Playlist for the Revolution.
She told us a bit about her thoughts around approaching Reverberation.
Reverberation is a beautiful play about love, loneliness and connection: how we find new connections to substitute lost ones, how we find solace in the many distracting things of modern life, how we cope with heartbreak, how behavioural cycles repeat until we break them, how we sometimes cling on to familiarity and negative triggers, and how we create and selfishly project onto others to survive our own bouts of loneliness.
It’s a tale of survival that is all too familiar and too relatable. We have all, at one point in our lives, been a Jonathan, a Claire, or a Wes. Reverberation is a small story writ large – how one man’s journey to untethering himself to his past can help us confront our own.
In terms of sound design, the title of the play presents an interesting provocation: how can we present the “reverberations” of Jonathan’s journey and the incidents of the play? What are the chapters in Jonathan’s life that reverberate throughout? What sounds do Jonathan hear that seem to reverberate in his head? “Who” reverberates throughout the play?
There is a central character we never see: Gabriel (Jonathan’s ex-partner), who haunts the play. Our playwright Matthew has specified several pieces of music that underscore Gabriel and Jonathan’s relationship, and so a lot of the soundscape elements derive from those tracks. We hint at Gabriel’s presence one note, one chord, one song at a time, so when the tracks finally reveal themselves, the audience have both been attuned to them and understand them to symbolise Jonathan’s attachment to Gabriel, and his personal journey with that incident. We also heighten Jonathan’s mental state and awareness of his surroundings through accentuating his environment – footsteps may sound unnaturally loud to him, his fridge is buzzing all too strangely... all suggesting that his world is out of kilter.
Finally, we paint a picture of Jonathan in his destructive cycles of behaviour via (literally) cyclical music.
Character Playlists
Claire’s Playlist by Nicola T. Chang
Jonathan’s Playlist by Nicola T. Chang
Wes’ Playlist by Nicola T. Chang
Listen to Reverberation Sound Designer & Composer Nicola T. Chang as she caught up with DJ and presenter NGAIO for Soho Radio.
They dive deep into the creative process, exploring how music shapes storytelling, draws lines for the audience to fill in, and why representation is essential in the arts.
