Festival of New Writing
Through a connection to Downing, one of the colleges of Cambridge University in this wonderful city that I reside, Louisa the Director of Music introduced me to Stephen Bennett, Director of Drama who runs a yearly event called the Festival of New Writing to see if there's a way of involving me; something I've been keen to explore.
In their own words
The theatrical jewel in the Downing Drama Society crown is its annual Festival of New Writing, established in 2014 and now a highly prestigious feature of the Cambridge drama scene. Every Lent Term, the Festival is produced and staged by students with the support and guidance of award-winning scriptwriter, director and theatre educator, Stephen Bennett, who helped initiate the event and continues to play an active part in its growth and development.
Students of all disciplines and from every Cambridge college submit one-act plays to be read and assessed over Christmas and from the wealth of admissions, nine are chosen to be performed over three nights.
I was asked to work on the sound and music for two of the plays. This involved a week of prep; creating sounds for stage doors, a crowd of eager fans, New York at night, ocean waves, boats, and 30 fictitious Tik Tok videos spelling the end of the world. For the voice work I used Elevenlabs AI to alter recordings of my voice to create a new voice for each clip, many of which I added sound design and music to. Having not sound designed in 20 yrs or live theatre for 30 it was a challenge!
A week of prep followed by a week of rehearsals culiminating in performances at the Howard Theatre. Wonderfully coincidental as it's named after the late Alan Howard, my connection to Downing. Alan ever so kindly let me stay in his spare apartment in Cannes during the film festival which much of my work in film has come from. I met fellows from Downing at his memorial and offered to give something back to Downing after he had given me so much.
I'm sitting in the Howard Theatre control room whilst Steve Bennett introduces the plays …
And here's 'Noa', one of the two plays I created the sound for - utilising an iPad to trigger sounds in real time.
