Theatre's Kid Simple sounds like fun

October 7, 2024 – DENTON – TWU Theatre opens its 2024-25 season with a combination drama, comedy and history lesson in one of the fundamental elements of entertainment: sound effects.

"When I explained the concept and said we're going to have all of this Foley sound, a shout of joy went up among the tech students," said director Patrick Bynane, PhD. "It's exactly the kind of thing that a technical theater student is always on the hunt for, and there was a bit of competition amongst the tech students.

"I had to explain it for some of the acting and education-emphasis students that sounds were made live and you used all sorts of interesting tools and toys to create sound effects."

Kid Simple, which runs Oct. 9-13 at Redbud Theater, is a play within a play. It's the story of Moll, who invents a machine that can hear the unheard, told within and alongside a live radio play. Essential to both plot lines is a Foley artist, who creates the play's sound effects. But the Foley artist is not just a behind-the-scenes tech.

"The Foley artist is a character in the play," Bynane said. "At one point getting yelled at by the narrator for screwing up the sound effects. It's a whole lot of fun."

Creating sound effects in entertainment has been around for thousands of years, back to the stages of China, Greece and Rome, long before the name Foley artist was derived from the work of Jack Foley in Hollywood. The first sound artists worked in live stage plays and later in radio plays, creating everyday sounds such as doors opening and closing, lightning, wind, rain, and earthquakes. The job evolved into recording real sounds, like animals, traffic or storms, for use in movies and television. The latest iteration is inventing sounds, particularly for science fiction. Two of Hollywood's most iconic sound effects, Godzilla's roar and the Martian heat ray in 1953's War of the Worlds, were created not with complicated technology but with musical instruments recorded and played backwards.

Foley artists have even graduated to become the subject of stories, like the 1981 John Travolta movie Blow Out, about a Foley artist who accidentally records evidence of a murder.

In the role of the Foley artist is Athena Gardner, a junior working toward a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre with a concentration in technical and design. Gardner arrived at TWU after getting an associate's degree from Grayson College in Denison, Texas.

"My emphasis is sound design," Gardner said. "I've experienced Foley, and I've done two radio plays where Foley was a very big part of the show, but I've never been the operator. Patrick said, 'do you want to give it a shot?' I said, 'sure, let's go for it.' It's a challenge. It's something I've been interested in doing but never had the chance to do. It's been so much fun researching and figuring out the strange new ways to create mundane sounds. But in the script, not all of the sounds are mundane.

"Instead of being tucked away in the shadows, the Foley artist has their own dedicated platform where lights are on them all the time, and everyone will see every little movement I make," Gardner said. "Even though I'm primarily a technical person, I'm having to kind of pull out my old community theater bits and be like, how would I react to that on stage? There's also a narrator on stage, and the narrator and the Foley artist get into altercations when things don't go right, and the Foley artist retaliates against the narrator so that you have the main story and what's going on between the narrator and the Foley artist in the radio play."

Because of the volume and complexity of sound in the play, Gardner is assisted by two off-stage sound artists, including Daniel Sandoval, who mixes live and pre-recorded sound.

"It's so much fun," Gardner said.

The play was written by Jordan Harrison, a product of the Brown University playwriting program, "arguably the best playwriting program in the country and has been for 30 years," Bynane said. Harrison has been shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize.

"The author, I think, is really trying to make a point," Bynane said. "He adds an almost sci-fi touch to the story in that the machine can hear former conversations. It can hear the sound of a heart breaking. Here's this invention that pushes technology so far that its inventor hasn't really thought about the true consequences of what they've invented, and Moll discovers that inventions have consequences, and we really have to think, should this be released into the world?"

It's a theme reminiscent of Michael Crichton stories. And like many of Crichton's technological breakthroughs, Moll's invention attracts nefarious attention.

"But then the playwright uses theatrical technology that has been around since people have banged two coconut shells together to make the sound of a horse," Bynane said. "This is very much a deliberate strategy to smash together this story about cutting-edge technology with technology that is decidedly not cutting edge."

Just as in old radio plays, several actors play multiple roles.

"The narrator and the actor playing Moll are the only actors who stay in one character. Everybody else is jumping from two, three, four and sometimes five characters. I think the other thing that's really interesting about the play is that Harrison has very clearly built Moll's story along a very classic, archetypal path. Moll's journey is very much the traditional hero's journey. She has to leave home. She has to accept the challenge. She has to confront the danger. And like any hero in any hero's journey, she can only return home when she has been changed by the journey. And there are other mythological archetypes in there as well that Harrison is building the story around. Our antagonist is very much kind of a trickster, a shape changer who can be many things to many people whenever it suits his mischievous ends, which I think makes a story feel grounded and accessible."

In addition to the Foley artist are six actors, led by newcomer Victoria Cortez in the role of Moll.

"Victoria brings a great energy," Bynane said. "It's a role that's got a little bit of everything. The character has her heart broken and falls in love and has her ideas about herself challenged. And all through it, the character is laugh- out-loud funny and makes you tear up by the end."

The cast includes several TWU Theatre veterans, including Mercedes Slade, who co-starred in the 2022 opener, The Effect, and Recommended Reading for Girls; Adia Best, who had the lead in last spring's Eurydice; Dinvela Adam, who was in The Effect, Hamlet, The Affected Young Ladies, Head Over Heels, and Eurydice; and Wesley Miller, who was in The Affected Young Ladies and Hamlet. This is the TWU on-stage debut for Ezra Pleimann, who has previously been behind the scenes as a prop designer.

Kid Simple

Cast
Victoria Cortez: Moll
Wes Miller: Oliver
Mercedes Slade: Mom/Miss Kendrick/etc.
Ezra Pleimann: Dad/Mr. Wachtel/etc.
Dinvela Adam: The Mercenary/Garth/Satyr/Fig Tree/etc.
Adia Best: Narrator
Athena Gardner: Foley artist

Performances
Wednesday-Friday, Oct. 9-11, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 12, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 13, 2 p.m.

Tickets
$10 for adults, including TWU faculty and staff.
$5 for students, children and senior citizens.