MEDIATHEK

For Your Ears Only, is a concept based radiophonic theatre show using voice, field recordings, foley sound and music composition. The main question of investigation was how can sound & sonic art effect the sensory perception of an audience to enable them to create their own show.

And quite unconventional, in that what you see on the stage is much less than what you experience.

This is due to the design of the piece. We use the sonic form of the Radio Play in conjunction with a dense music composition, theatricalize this by placing it in a theatre venue, using specific spacialisation of the soundscape, and minimal lighting, to enable the storytelling of a fantastic theatre show. There are no real actors on stage, only sound in the space.

What makes this show particular is that we are working with the principles of a radio play, whereby you as audience imagine the action being played out from the audio information you receive.

What is exceptional about this piece is that the narrative of the story is not only told through the soundscape but also by three critics who are describing their personal experience & critiquing a show the have jointly seen. Which in fact, is show that was never made.

All the processes of the making For Your Ears Only were through audio only means. Firstly, I asked the theater collective Superamas to give me a concept of their ideal show.

Together we recorded 4 hours of listening material about this piece that was then given to three professional critics, 2 from Belgian and 1 from the UK.

They listened to and about the show, imagined it themselves and built their critiques based on that. We recorded a further 6 hours of Critique in studio from which we made an edited script.

We accompanied this with scenes we built of the fantastic show, via field recordings, music composition and foley to create our piece For Your Ears Only.

Through using these recordings and musical components we created a sound and music scape that accompanies the voices to tell the story of the Superama’s show.

However we not only replicate this fake show; we also make a comment on the theatre process itself from concept to critique, and how the Artistic Critique is disappearing from the main media, replaced by the 5 star Rating system, quick and digestible.

What we aim with For Your Ears Only, is to give the audience their own experiential exclusive show, told through sound alone.