The art music of theatre: Howard Barker as sound designer

ABSTRACT

Howard Barker's use of sound in the productions of his plays is a fugitive aspect of his stagecraft. Barker fashions an ‘art music’ of theatre in which sound is privileged for its referential ambiguity and polyvalence, and, indeed, its potential strangeness as a signifying agent. Barker's remit as sound designer arguably extends beyond the selection and editing of pre-recorded sound cues to encompass his use of language as a dramatist and his directorial arrangement of that language in performance via actors' vocality and speech, as well as the sounds of their movement. The wholly integrated nature of Barker's artistic approach allows his sound designs to be interpreted in both dramatic and scenographical contexts. That is the aim of this article, which provides integrated analyses of two Wrestling School productions directed by Barker: Gertrude—The Cry, performed at the Riverside Studios in London in 2002, and Found in the Ground, performed at the Riverside Studios in 2009.

KEYWORDS:

• Howard Barker
• The Wrestling School
• sound design
• theatre music
• modernism
• auteurship