Design Statement

In Common is a psychological drama that examines race, power, and modern relationships, all with a sardonic wit. The playwright opens the play with the description, 

“Corny, old-ass Hip Hop music is playing Melanie’s cramped one-bedroom apartment: Biz Markie, MC Hammer, Kid and [sic] Play.” 

The character Cyrus, who we find out later is a manifestation of Melanie’s mind, opens the play proclaiming, “This music is shit.” In discussion with the director regarding the world of the play, we ended up fully committing to hip hop from the mid-80’s into the mid-90’s as the soundtrack for the show. The music created a cohesive aural frame for the play, helps support the setting in NYC, and matches the same posture as the play. The two departures we have from this genre include Cuban music–supporting a mystery within the play about what happened on a vacation to Cuba–and a scene that takes place inside a bridal shop. For the bridal shop, we transitioned out of Nice & Smooth’s “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow” which samples “Fast Car” into a muzak piano reduction of “Fast Car.”

The sound design internal to the play was in good enough shape that I was able to give some extra attention to the preshow/intermission/postshow music. I wanted to support the classic hip-hop ethos that we had developed for the show, and I attempted to essentially create classic DJ transitions between each track with beat matching and classic effects like phasing and echo. You can listen at the links below.