And A Child Shall Lead
By: Michael Slade
Summary
And A Child Shall Lead is about children living in a concentration camp during World War II. Through this show, the audience was able to see the struggles the children faced and how some of them were able to keep hope alive, while others lost it.
For this production, the director decided to use puppets to play the children. This presented an interesting challenge for me, as the sound designer, because I needed to find a way completely immerse the audience into the show. I needed them to believe these puppets were real and have them completely forget about the actors controlling them. This show was effects heavy and it was fun to be able to use new programs in order to achieve some of these effects.
Sound Effects
Lightway to Heaven is one of the sounds I created for this production with the help of my A2. The photo on the right is what was happening during the effect. It shows one of the children being lifted into the air, which signified their death ultimately. Their name was read off and this signified them being forced onto a train, which was their death sentence. The sound is able to help the audience feel the loss of hope that the children also felt during this moment.
​
The sound is of children laughing on a playground setting, but it has an eerie ton to it. As the sounds continue, it is slowly covered by a shoop noise and that is the noise of the child being taken from the light. The child is being taken away from their joyful times, into a time of darkness and uncertainty.
One of the children, Pavel, played the recorder throughout the show. I created a few pieces that sounded like a child was playing a recorder so there would be variety throughout the show. They sound incomplete and I hoped they would help the audience understand how young the character was based on his playing skills. I created these pieces in Logic Pro v10.
The german announcement was used at the end of the show, to signify the liberation of the camp. It was a powerful message for the audience to here because it was in German but it was a sound of hope. One child was left on stage and he was the only one saved in he end. The audience saw the rubble from the war and they were able to hear a hopeful announcement . This announcement was done by Luke Kozal.
Below is the speaker plot for this show. It shows the set because I incorporated speakers into it. The subwoofers are placed behind two set walls in order to help give the illusion of reality to the show. I also utilized the hanging speakers which I placed backstage because it helped the audience truly enter the world the characters were living in. I had a speaker cluster at the front of the stage hanging, as well as two other speakers pointing towards the audience more at the seat level. Then I placed two speakers in the back of house and these speakers also helped immerse the audience into the world. At one point I had a train sound coming from the back of the house and ending up on stage. This helped the audience to better understand where the train was going.
Photos by: Tony Beran