During Fellow Travelers, the audience is a bystander into the lives of those living in
Washington, D.C. during the lavender scare, and we witness the love story between two men during the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. This story is one of pain, longing, and questioning. These people live in very oppressive society, they are constantly being watched and never know when they can be themselves. I want my sound design to reflect that society in the way that they can be “intrusions” on the character’s safety and act as a reminder that they are never truly alone. The challenge will be to figure out how to use the sound effects in tandem with the music without conflicting with the space that the music takes up.


For the system, I planned to experiment by using a line array for this production. My initial plan was to place a single six box array in the center to support the few sound effects involved along with any reinforcement the pit will need. I ended up hanging a single five box center array of d&b T10s. I supplemented the array with two fills to provide a coverage to the outskirts of the seating that is being missed by the line array. My goal is for the sound to seem like it is coming from on stage. This is a very intimate and moving story and I want everything to be contained within the world. I used this production as an opportunity to learn and explore both opera and tuning line arrays.