Kate Wecker - Sound Designer

At its core, sound design is curation and timing. Sometimes I comb through recordings — often hundreds of them — to find the one that sounds like what the director is imagining. Sometimes I thoughtfully place microphones on musicians and actors and layer them together until they feel like a single thing. Then I decide exactly when and where you, the audience, should hear it. It's a glorified DJ set in service of a story, and I've been doing it for twenty years.

In that time I've designed everything from world premiere dramas to grand opera to actor-musician rock musicals, at houses ranging from intimate ninety-seat black boxes to twelve-hundred-seat regional theatres. My work at A Noise Within earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination for Theatrical Excellence in Sound Design. Before going fully freelance, I held resident and department-head positions at Pioneer Theatre Company, Laguna Playhouse, and South Coast Repertory, and spent several years as Head Audio on the national tour of Menopause the Musical.

Theatre is a fundamentally subjective art form and sound design might be the most subjective part of it. (Don’t believe me? Ask the internet the best way to mic a drum kit.) If you're looking for someone who takes the work, but not themselves too seriously, I might be the designer for you!