The bulk of my fieldwork consists of assisting three sound designers, Bart Fasbender, Sam Crawford, and Darron West. I’ll be following Bart through at three shows, in as many different venues, Sam through work on two new pieces for Bill T. Jones Dance Company, and Darron in his work on Broadway and for SITI Company. Bart works mostly in off-Broadway theater and has a background in film sound. Sam works in dance and comes from a musical background. Darron works with larger pieces as well as experimental theater.
This fieldwork reflects my work at school as a Theater major. It is an extension of my work in dramatic study (text preparation for design), technical theater, music theory, and audio design. I’m seriously considering becoming an audio designer after college, which is reflected by my two-year-running audio 99WSPs with ’62 Center A/V manager Brad Berridge—those in response to the college’s lack of a dedicated sequence of audio design classes. My academic study of theater will also be reinforced, via intimate exposure to the wide range of theatrical styles represented by these designers’ work.
Further, Jones and SITI’s give special attention to the role an audience plays in the course of a performance. Both companies have, in their work, engaged in ritual methods of controlling entry to the theater space and the world of the performers. The process of creating powerful and transcendent senses of reality within necessarily contrived settings is a topic of heavy consideration in religious studies, which is my second major. Spending time with this work will provide an interesting look into sacred space, ritual devotion, and the process of public conversion. What I can take away and generalize into principles of religious studies I will then be able to actively apply in my own work, both as a scholar and as an increasingly coherent artist.
~ Eben Jooseph- Hoffer

Students:

Eben Joondeph-Hoffer ‘