Cold Water

by Philippa Lawford
Directed by Michael Herwitz
Music by Julia Bailen
Scenography by Mextly Couzin
Sound Design by Ryan Gamblin

Produced by Little Engine Theater at Ki Smith Gallery, NYC.

After university, Emma moves back in with her parents in Hertfordshire and gets a job at her old school, assisting in the Drama department. Before long, she's spending every day in the studio with Matt, her boss. Matt decides to teach Emma everything he knows, and Emma feels her life starting to change. Cold Water is about the paralyzing concept of making choices and the never ending dance between impulses and rationality, thoughts and actions.

Within this site specific production produced in the basement of an art gallery on the Lower East Side, we used the instrumentation and scoring provided by Julia Bailen as building blocks, changing pitch, rate, and timbre to build underscores, transitions, and sonic page-turns. As the characters move into and out of a Chekhovian pseudo-dream, we used specially sourced speakers which mounted to the architecture of the space, resonating I-beams and air vents with music, emphasizing the heightened state of theatricality.