Fefu and Her Friends
by María Irene Fornés
2021-2022 Season Purdue Theatre Production
Directed by Raquel Lopez
Scenic Design by Denisse Chavez
Costume Design by Allison Jones
Lightning Design by Denisse Chavez
Sound Design by Huhao Yang
Technical Director: Trevor Marshall
Opening Night: November 12, 2021
The play was written in 1977, this early immersive drama is one of the best-known plays of María Irene Fornés, Cuban-American playwright and matriarch of Latinx playwriting and avant-garde theatre traditions. Set in the 1930s, eight women gather at their friend Fefu’s home to plan an educational fundraiser, As the characters in the play seem to be casually chatting and complaining about their daily lives, audience can feel the oppression and distortion that the women feel in their hearts due to gender recognition, and analyze in depth the various dilemmas faced by women in their lives. While a seemingly simple plot, the play is anything but. As the audience moves through the stage space to engage with the scenes in a different order, Fornés dramatizes the complex experiences of women in patriarchal culture. I served as the Sound Designer for this production, designed the sound effects, underscore, as well as the immersive sound system for the show
Sound Cue Samples
When Julia saw the gun Fefu used to "joke" with her husband, she feels a sense of dread and eerie. She seemed to understand what Fefu meant by doing this, and she also felt fear and empathy for it. This weird and frightening piano piece fits Julia's weird performance in this scene.
On the lawn in the courtyard of Fefu’s house, fefu confides to Emma her inner struggle and pain, and expresses it through the image of the “black cat” she fears. This sense of distortion and fear is like this discordant piano piece.
Julia falls into a horrific psychic vision in the bedroom. She split her self, one is being judged and one is confessing. For this surreal scene, I used atmospheric sound, and introduced a continuous loop of piano passages when she was performing a weird monologue, rendering a sense of eerie.
In the third act, Fefu sees the paralyzed Julia standing up from the wheelchair and walking up the stairs in the living room. This surreal hallucinatory scene is full of impact with Fefu's fear, and I created this piece to fits the surreal atmosphere and reflect Fefu's emtion.
In the intermission between ACT I and II, the audience needs to be led into the scene on the stage, and enter different rooms to watch the immersive performances separately. In this process, I designed this piece of music, through the cooperation of the main instrument piano and the synthesizer sound that creates a sense of atmosphere, the audience is gradually introduced into the immersive theatre world on the stage.
Other Cue Samples
Sound Design Statement
Huhao Yang
I hope that the sound will serve as a clue to express emotions in this play, and cooperate with the feeling of "suffer from deep pressure in daily life" created by this play. And make sure while deepening the audience's sense of immersion, it will not allow the audience to feel the effect of being pulled out of the dramatic space. And I did not design the music of this play to be related to the set time and year background. On the one hand, the story does not show too many characteristics of life in England in the 1930s, and all the scenes are in Fefu's house. It is not necessary for music to show chronology in this respect. Besides, the British music styles that were popular in the 1930s were mainly toward cheerful big bands or swing music, etc., which is completely inconsistent with the heavy and critical tone of this play. so I want to design the music as a surrealist style. Many of the music in this play are underscores based on piano and ambient sense. These music can contains emotions in the depths and expresses some contradictory characteristics of the characters in a very obscure form. And the piano can convey emotions more accurately. Besides, In some special scenes, such as Julia’s hallucinations, Cindy tells her dreams and other situations that are similar to inner expressions, the music is dominated by atonal ambient music. The extremely depressed and fearful emotions are amplified in these illusions, allowing the audience to directly feel the pain in the hearts of these women. In addition to the music, I also designed all the necessary sound effects and some ambient sounds that appear in the script, such as the gun used by Fefu, the kitchen where the soup is being cooked, etc., And they are mainly based on reality, because the audience is in the scenes of the drama, I hope they can have a kind of "virtual reality", that is, although these scenes are fake, their sensory feelings are close to real life. I need to make the audience feel like they are just in true rooms and watching their friends’ conversations, so I am more cautious in the use of sound effects. I don’t want some excessive sound effects to make the audience feel a kind of "fake" that is separated from the drama space. I hope that this drama that puts the audience on the stage can make the audience feel that they are a part of the world in the play, so that they can understand the performance and thoughts of all the characters more deeply.
Sound System Design
The sound system design of this production is full of challenges. In ACT I and III, the audience will normally sit in the house and watch the performance in the audience area, but they need to go up to the stage and enter different rooms in ACT II, so I need to make sure both the house system and the on stage system can bring them a great auditory experience. And I hide a bunch of small speakers in each room to play stereo cues in different scenes. And I also reduced the sound interference on stage by adjusting the coverage angle of all the speakers. At the same time, I made a detailed plan with the stage manager to ensure that the cue groups can be run accurately in the simultaneous performance of four rooms. If you are interested in how we implement this complex immersive system and how to run the cue reasonably, please browse the following files and download the cue sheet for reference.
For viewing more documentation please download the pdf files
Archive
Sound Team
Sound Designer:
Huhao Yang
Assist. Sound Designer:
Stephen Tsai
Production Sound Engineer:
Grant Porter
Assist. Sound Engineer:
Tyler Berg
Sound Board Operator-A1:
Henry Shen
Mic Technician-A2:
Dannalee Mata
Mentor:
Barry Funderberg
Main Speakers &
Proscenium Speakers
Hansen Theatre
FOH Mixer
Stage Side
A2 Monitoring Station
Stage Speakers Load in
Main Stage
- Living Room Set
Immersive Room 1
Lawn Area
Immersive Room 2
Kitchen
Immersive Room 3
Bedroom
Immersive Room 4
Study Room
