Lyric Hammersmith Studio

London

UK

‘Barbara is an American judge serving in the Bosnia War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo . Her husband is a London-based sound artist who has been commissioned to create a soundscape for a festival on the Charles Bridge in Prague . Listening to the arguably ‘protected’ recorded court testimony together sets them on a path that will test the boundaries of their relationship.’

This work broadly experimented with the construction of highly controlled very subtle scene ambiences designed to create an altered sense of realism in the theatre space, more ‘felt’ than heard.  All actors were on radio mics despite the small performing venue—not for ‘reinforcement’ but to give me flexibility for positioning and treatment of those voices in real-time.  Verbatim testimony sourced from an actual Bosnian War Crimes case was used extensively, along with low-level underscore both to enhance the emotion of the testimony and the courtroom atmosphere which involved simultaneous translation across English and Bosnian.  Field recordings in Sarajevo provided other more ‘realistic’  atmospherics, including the ‘call to prayer’ heard in the ‘Bibans’ scene.  A number of musical character themes were composed along with ambient underscores, and, of course, the Charles Bridge soundscape, with its reference to Bosnian Sevdah music.

Gregg Reed Fisher