‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore - University of Utah

Jacobean pulp meets dubstep…

This show was written/produced about 40 years after Shakespeare’s works, so the play is old and falls into the Jacobean period. Ford’s writing was less beautiful than much of Shakespeare’s, but the rhetorical line through the writing is definitely easier to grasp. As such, Ford’s text made for an interesting canvas for some non-historical design choices.

Ford’s story is full of murder, passion, jealousy, and yes, incest. The director approached me with some samples of music she had been using for movement exercises and as inspiration for the show. Within those tracks was the Zed’s Dead remix of Blue Foundation’s “Eyes on Fire.” I hadn’t spent any time with dubstep previously, though I had noticed this sort of music making its way into advertising and action film trailers.  After listening to other artists in the genre, I felt like dubstep held the correct balance between melody and aggression and was a good choice for the world we were creating.

We needed a lot of music to support nearly three hours of material. This was a project that needed its own sound, so I took on composing responsibilities and began to learn how to create and program dubstep. It’s an interesting genre as there are some “rules” surrounding bpm and song structure, but there’s concurrently a lot of freedom within that structure. I ended up developing a theme and several variations, as well as pieces for two dances, and scene change music.

CREDITS

'Tis Pity She's a Whore
by John Ford
University of Utah Dept. of Theatre
Salt Lake City, UT
November 9 - 18, 2012

Director: Sarah Shippobotham
Scenic Designer: Iris Salazar
Lighting Designer: Jesse Portillo
Costume Designer: Katie Miller
Hair/Makeup Designer:
Sarah Shauerhamer
Sound Designer and Composer: Matt Tibbs