It was a great joy getting to work with Best Medicine again in a different capacity, after i stage managed several shows of theirs in 2020-2022. Knowing they typically don’t hire outside designers, I was also curious to what this production would call for. John wanted to kick off the company’s tenth season with a more technically demanding show so he brought us in to do just that.

From the short summary and knowing John’s writing, it seems there is a lot to play with here, but there was actually a larger challenge in finding the “realism” in supernatural sound. At the end of the play, Nancy is pretending to be Satan through the intercom system to keep up the lie Paul has created. The script calls for some “earth shattering” demonic growls, but it not being real provided a fine line to ride. It had to be scary enough to provide something for the actors to respond to, while being “real” enough for us (the audiencce) to really see what’s going on after putting two and two together. Rachel Arling Samson (the actress playing Nancy) had a great voice in her demon impersonation that I could work off of. After editing together many different sounds such as a child’s monster growl and heavy breathing, it created the intimidating yet playful element we were seeking.

Watching the final scene set as a live TV show, I asked “Does Earl Templeton have a jingle or a theme song?” to which Evan Morogiello (the director) said “He does now!” This provided me a chance to play around with composition again which I have not gotten to do in a while. I luckily know of people who are or have been on “faith healing” sermon-like television shows, giving me inspiration for the song that parallels the idea of Southern politeness and keeping everything nice on the surface, but notice something isn’t quite right.