Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

130 Chapter 5 Designers and Technicians
have a single aesthetic style. Instead,
he considers himself something of a
chameleon and frames his designs in
close concert with the context of the
play and the perspective of the director.
Working with the playwright/director
Richard Nelson, for example, who
asks for the sound “to be a part of the
storytelling, to be another character
in the play,” he investigates the sonic
ambience of the text. For Nelson’s
Franny’s Way, set in an apartment
above a jazz club, Lehrer describes
his challenge as creating the unseen
people downstairs. “What would they
be listening to? Jazz, of course, but
what kind of jazz? What tempo? Cool
or hot, ballad or up-tempo? Saxophone,
yes, but Dexter Gordon or John
Coltrane? I tried to find the musical
style that would convey the ambient
emotional feel Nelson wanted.” For
Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh,
two older American women are traveling
through India. “What sort of music
do they hear?” Lehrer asked himself.
“There are many regions in India and
many local musical forms, and it would
be disrespectful to the culture not
to represent this. So I have to be an
amateur musicologist; I have to listen
to everything from the locale, the era,
and the culture that the play is seeking
to represent.”
Lehrer considers sound design a
perfect marriage of art and technology.
“You have to have something to say.
Sound design is not just technical, but
you absolutely have to have the skills to
do it. While you can’t let the technique
get in the way, you also have to make
it work for you. Sound design takes
place in real time. When you’re in
technical rehearsals, if you don’t
know the technology you can’t keep
up with the speed of the rehearsal,
and if that happens you simply can’t
realize your art. You have to control the
technology; you can’t let the technology
control you.”
2.
2. At his piano, Lehrer composes a new
melody that might be inserted into his
design. © Robert Cohen