If we imagine that a theater set is comparable to a virtual game world, wouldn’t Wwise succeed in giving life to a stage? In fact, it beautifully did on Le Léthé, and although Audiokinetic’s middleware Wwise was initially designed for games, it may be as powerful for theater sound designers as it is for game audio designers.

Prior to working on Le Léthé, I had experience working with Wwise for games, but absolutely none in theater. This was the occasion to confirm my belief that a game audio mindset and workflow (i.e. granulized, event based approach) can be effectively applied to a theatre play. Beyond the technical side of things, theater and games share some similarities as to where and how action and narration unfold within a particular game or on stage, so it seemed to make sense.

I hope that theater sound designers with no experience in middleware may find this article helpful. From my experience on this project, I believe game audio middleware can enable them to build adaptive soundscapes, music, and playback systems that are rock solid and incredibly easy to use during shows.

The project

Le Léthé is a play about memory and forgetfulness by play director Philippe Vallepin, adapted from a 2000 book by Dimitris Dimitriadis.

From the beginning of production, the play director knew that audio was going to play an important role, as it would help to pace and structure the text (which contains many inversions and repetitions of words).

I was initially brought on this project to design “sound textures”; but, as we progressed, I was given almost complete freedom over the content, how much sound there would be, and how it would play back.

 

Production Work Method

I worked with video shootings of rehearsals in Reaper. From there I spotted where Wwise Events would be triggered. I then designed and composed a short “static” version of the soundtrack. I mixed the stems in 7.1 with the Ircam’s Spat (each act happens in a different corner of the auditorium). The sound design and music compositions were then granulized and exported into smaller segments and layers. Finally, the real-time designs were made in Wwise and played back with a Soundcaster session.

I would say that one third of the time was spent on gathering field recordings, working with musicians, and recording foleys; another third was composing drafts in Reaper; and the last third was spent in Wwise on the playback system.

 

Approach

The main objective was to make the soundtrack inseparable from the actors’ performance. We also wanted to support the actors without having them worry about synchronization with a complex soundtrack. It had to be subject to the actors’ own pacing during rehearsals while acting as a coating, by structuring, pacing, creating ruptures and smooth transitions, and changing densities.

I made no distinction between foley, music, and field recordings when composing. They are taken as a whole, and every recorded sound served as a potential component. For example, some winds in Le Léthé were designed by manipulating silk clothing and creaking bow hair on a double bass, part of the rain comes from manipulating peas in a bowl, and some of the internal body sounds were made with parquet floor creaks, nylon bags, an accordion, unusual microphone placements, and detuned instruments.

Space & Time Continuum

All scenes in Le Léthé’s original text were taking place in unknown spaces (except one, which was at a bus stop). Additionally, an ambiguous creative element was that it was not clear whether the twelve characters in the play were indeed twelve characters or just one person.

Considering the abstract nature of the text and its characters, I thought that the soundtrack could serve as an ‘anchor’ on which both actors and viewers could hold on to through the show. Audio would act as a thirteenth character, embracing them all, and sometimes acting as a physical extension of their bodies (the question of the body is central in the play), or working as a modular scenography set.

I wanted to avoid the artificiality of having the soundtrack play the first minute of every scene and then fade out when actors speak. Hence, there is sound all along the play (~1h15min). It goes from a barely audible sound support, working as some kind of ‘perfume’ to maintain the sensation of space, to competing with shouting actors at times. This helps viewers bypass the soundtrack naturally, yet if ever one of them would wander off into an inner reverie, the soundtrack was there to support him or her get right into the play.

So, I needed a playback system capable of driving smooth complex transitions that was quickly adaptable during rehearsals and that could keep track of dozens of sounds playing at the same time with automatic and independent actions like fades in/out, delayed triggers, filtering, volume, limited/unlimited number of loops...and so on.

Basically, the Wwise Event system helped me systematize and encapsulate audio behaviors that were always the same (i.e. at this point in the text, this set of sounds stops here, and these start in 10 seconds with a 20 second fade in, those others start right away, etc.), and trigger them all with a single button (Event). It helped me concentrate on more critical elements like syncing with actors, and dynamic sound objects (RTPCs, see 2nd extract below).

This is all very basic game audio design, but it works wonder in a theater play!

 

Detailed extracts of playback designs in Le Léthé

 

ACT V - ‘Shouts and Racket sequence