Steel Magnolias is a story about community, friendship, and above all else: powerful women. Between the director and the design team, we all worked together to make sure this production was not a museum piece. Even though the story is taking place in the 80s, it is still a very relevant story that celebrates women. These characters and their story are still something that I believe anyone can pull something from. For my sound design, I wanted to help enhance and add to the story, and not overwhelm the world with sound because I wanted the voices of the characters to stand out the most. The play looks and sounds like the 80s, but is still grounded in realism.
One of the main focuses on sound was the radio. We heavily curated what sounds we wanted to come from the radio as it contains such heavy symbolism and represents Shelby. The hardest part was finding songs to play over the airwaves that did not seem out of place for the scene or the time period. For example, in the one scene Annelle starts to become very religious, I picked "Heaven is a Place on Earth" to play in the background on the radio.