Onstage: live sound we made onstage, whether voice, breath, or through interaction with objects (ie. kettle, pasta, chairs). A really important onstage sound was the dripping sound we made with suspended bags of ice, which continued throughout the entire piece.

PA: any sound that came through the main sound system of the theatre.

Radio: sound that came through or from the radio speaker. This was primarily recorded music and voice, but was also static and feedback.

Ambient: sounds from the audience, the building, or the street outside. (ie. the sound of the tube, traffic). Opening the window onto Hampstead Road was one way we tried to acknowledge and lean into these sounds.

Of the house/outside refers to whether the sound originated from within the domestic space we established onstage or not (whether live or recorded), whilst ‘questionably diegetic’ refers to the way that sounds could arguably be heard by one character and not another. For example: Haeyoung’s character acknowledged the audience and the theatrical space and could therefore hear sound associated with that, whilst mine did not.

We developed these sound relationships in line with our ideas of perspective (see me and not-me), but also in response to discussions around the isolation of the characters and story. Whether sound was intrusive or out of place directly correlated to our ideas around creating (un)familiarity: a radio broadcast, for example, is not out of place in a home, but why is it about exorcisms? Why does it sound like it is from another era? All the noises that came from the PA system correlated to items and areas in the home, but why are they out of sync with what is happening onstage?

The dripping sound deserves its own reflection – it was one of the first sounds we encountered when developing the piece, and was significant in its constancy. It began within minutes of the piece beginning and continued through to the end. It was Onstage, so both diegetic and of the house, but how noticable it was quickly faded as we and the audience became used to it (see discussion of refamiliarisation for more on this), and only became prominent again during periods of extended silence.

The mutability of the dripping sound in relation to silence really intrigued us, and pushed us to do a lot of exercises where we pushed how long the stage could be silent for throughout development. We soon found that all of our chosen modes of sounds were most potent in their relation to silence; the impact they had on the audience seemed amplified. But we were also curious about the effect of the silence itself: would it make people bored, frustrated, more engaged with subtext and detail? Would it create space to simply sit with the characters in their situation?

We got a lot of feedback about this from our sharings which reflected positively on the impact of silence, especially in scenes where the puppet was present. In addition to suggesting and working with us on the idea that sound from the radio could at times move up to the PA (which kicked off future rehearsal discussions about questionably diegetic sound), James expressed that silence was “the space in which these relationships live (or die, as the case may be)”. We realised our use of sound could only be as effective as the silences that balanced it.

I think on reflection some of the silent or very still sections that made it to the final sharing were too long. Whilst we found the moments of quiet between sudden or distinct sound in the nighttime PA track enthralling and suspensful during recording, this may have been because we were playing with a binaural head in a silent studio and every sound was significant for us. I think putting this in front of an audience didn't translate as well as we wanted, but the two rehearsals we spent recording it were a valuable and interesting process regardless: it allowed us to explore not only the full aural capacity of live sound from our set and props, but also the sound the puppet itself could make. Most of the sound in that recording is made by the papier-mache hand touching the set, props, or the fabric of its body. The artificiality of this – as noted by Nohar – prompted a very useful discussion about whether this suggested that sounds that came from the PA were artificial and non-diegetic, or whether it simply aligned the experience of Haeyoung’s character (for whom those sounds were unarguably diegetic) more closely with that of the puppet character.