Director

Rehearsal Diary

Set design

Costume design

Adam Cork - Composer, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Tell us a little about your process:

‘My ideal process would be as follows: I would start by
reading the play, quite quickly, just going through on a practical level, getting a sense of it as a text and if, as I go through, I spot any moments that I think could do with music, or where music or sound is demanded by the text, I mark them in. So in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that might be singing or ‘soft music’, or I might notice that there’s a certain mood that could be caught or supported with music or sound.

‘After having done that I’d have a meeting with the director and bring all those ideas that came out of my first reading of the text to that meeting and receive all the director’s ideas and talk about those. The process varies according to the director I’m working with. They tend to fall into one of 3 categories: some are prescriptive, some allow me to do whatever I’m suggesting, and some are like Michael – very clear about what they want but at the same time are quite flexible and want you to come with your own ideas and are happy to incorporate them, which is really nice!

‘And then after that I’ll go away and read the play in much more detail and take it on a cue by cue or moment by moment level. This is one of the most imaginative and exciting parts of the process for me. I create a sound plot on a spreadsheet on my computer and input cues onto it as I come to them. So, I would start at the top of the play with sound cue one, imagining what I want the design and the music to be. Here I’ve written ‘the essence of Athens is a burnished brass sound – or should it be woodwind? Finish cue: hint of longing but earthly, real physical desire, no hint of dreaming’. I go through like this without composing really, unless I’m absolutely inspired by what I’m thinking. Ideally this would happen in one session over about 2 days, but I rarely manage to do that! Hopefully by this stage I’ve also spoken to the sound technician at the theatre and found out about the sound equipment that will be available and how much money there is for hire and things like that, because that all needs to be incorporated into this process.

‘After I’ve done that I’ll either begin composing at the beginning of the show or I’ll begin with the rehearsal-sensitive cues – the priorities that need to be in place for the beginning of rehearsals. In this case that was the lullaby and the dance of reconciliation at the end of the play. Often I’ll use these first pieces of composition as the wellspring of material from which any melodic ideas come out and in this one I think it was the dance of reconciliation that brought up the main musical theme of the play. Pretty much every piece of music in the play apart from the lullaby, is based around the same 10 note theme in 5 pitches. All the underscoring, the Athens cues, the forest music and the mechanicals music is based around the same theme refracted through different instrumental combinations.
‘I compose mainly at the keyboard – whether that’s a normal piano or an electronic keyboard. As a first step I come up with something I like the sound of live and then if a show has a budget for musicians and it’s appropriate then I might use musicians in addition to the computer stuff that I’m doing. Because budgets for musicians are usually small it’s not always appropriate to use just live instrumentalists – it wasn’t for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, anyway, because I didn’t want one instrumental sound to dominate when it should be about creating a massive world, densely packed with all kinds of instrumental colours and timbres. Michael told me he wanted quite a lush, romantic sound, but not to set it in any particular period really - for it to be contemporary but not specific to a particular time.

‘I go into rehearsals to rehearse specifics like the lullaby, and on this show I was in rehearsals for the first 3 days of the last week, bringing in a 90% finished draft score to see how it works with the action. There was a practical reason on this show too. For example, seeing where Puck entered and exited on the stage enabled me to plan the sound so that it begins where he enters and ends where he exits using speakers positioned in particular locations. Also, after the Bergomask dance finishes, the characters hear the sound of “the iron tongue of midnight” tolling 12, so it was useful to be in rehearsals and realise that they are all gazing out to listen to that sound.

‘I think there is a job for us to do now as composers, despite the beauty of Shakespeare’s language, because the language can be unfamiliar to contemporary ears, and so if we can give subconscious cues it might help people understand the beauty of the text a bit more.

Talk us through the specific sound worlds you have created for the play:

‘There’s one for Athens, based on that big, brassy sound of authority, which was composed on computer but using samples or different brass instruments playing. The mechanical’s world is based on samples that I collected from cultures around the world and mixed them all up, so that when we hear the mechanicals’ tune we don’t think ‘that’s Iranian’, but there’s a Brazilian cuica in there, an Iranian dulcimer, an Irish bodhran drum and so it’s quite folky but not specifically coming from one place. And it’s made up of feel good harmonies (although actually it’s the Athens tune again, presented differently). There’s no specific instrumental association with the lovers, I’ve just given them more naturalistic foresty sounds, apart from at one point after the interval when the lovers get mixed up with Puck and so the magical world mixes with the sound world of the lovers.

‘The fairy world has abstract noises that are a combination of samples that I’ve sourced and synthesised sounds that I’ve created and edited. They sound almost as if they’re coming from living creatures but they aren’t living creatures that you can identify as being something that you know. And around that is an ambient bed of slowly shifting pads and bases – blending but nothing staying static for too long, perhaps staying at the same pitch or harmony but with a different instrumental timbre. The fairy world is underscored pretty much all the time. There are also moments of magic that are underscored by music – for example, Puck’s entrances and exits and Oberon’s spells. For these, I brought in elemental things like wind, and composed some of the sounds using samples.
The fairy world feels ‘out of joint’, which is a key production concept, and is supported by the text completely. The dance of reconciliation is more harmonious – as harmony has been restored to the forest – but I also wanted to bring a sense of sadness to the dance, as well as reconciliation because I feel the play is in one way about the last burst of youthful fantasy and magic before responsibility takes over – bittersweet loss that is totally different from the darkness and mystery of the fairy world in the forest.

^ top of page