My One-Girl Shakespeare Scene ended up starring the creepiest version of Oberon ever (also a profusion of tinkly fairy sound effects). The scene I chose was from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and involves Hermia confronting Demetrius over the whereabouts of her lover, Lysander. When Oberon enters to discover that that his servant, Puck, has mistakenly enchanted another man instead of Demetrius, he decides to go about it himself, sending Puck off to find the lady who is actually in love with Demetrius while he completes the magic spell.
Anyway, creepy fairy king ahead. You’ve been warned…
My first exposure to Shakespeare was through a set of tapes my mom bought for me and my little brother that all featured one guy reading through abbreviated versions of the Bard’s greatest plays. I wish I could find an example of his excellent narration, but sadly this was years ago and I can’t recall enough about the name of the cassettes to even begin searching for them. I do remember listening to those tapes over and over again, especially “Midsummer,” which has been my favorite to this day. When I saw the one-man play assignment in the audio repository I knew I had to try a scene from that play.
Technically I did ask a friend to help me out on this one–he and I both recited Oberon’s lines at the same time, creating a really nifty effect that didn’t involve any technical tinkering to achieve. Recording Hermia and Puck’s voices was similarly simple, but Demetrius, the guy Hermia is supposed to marry and attempts to run away from, proved a challenge. My voice is pretty high-pitched naturally, and while talking like a dude is less about pitch and more about tone, cadence and vocabulary (seriously. Check out the concept of gendered language in any sociolinguistics textbook. It’s fascinating stuff!) I still ended up re-recording his lines; I also lowered the pitch of those audio segments just a bit in Audacity. Unfortunately that led to Hermia’s lines sounding more echo-y, since I recorded them right outside of the kitchen, and Demetrius’ lines sounding more muted since they were recorded in my bedroom. I didn’t have the time (or the technical skill) to properly remedy that problem, but I hope it doesn’t detract too much from the overall piece.
As usual, Freesound.org proved invaluable in adding depth and nuance to my little snippet of audio. The first (and most essential) scene-setting sounds I needed were some nighttime background noises. I also knew I wanted some tinkly fairy sounding stuff to act as sound cues for when Oberon and Puck showed up. By searching for “fairy” I found some really nice wind-chime noises that I layered under Oberon’s lines, as well as a fantasy flight sound effect that I used for Puck’s exit and even an entire fairy-themed soundscape that was perfect to signal the fairies’ entrance, as well as Oberon’s magic spell.
Once I’d downloaded everything I needed (and converted a few files into .WAV format with the ever-useful Online-Convert.com) I imported everything into Audacity and got to chopping, cutting and rearranging. The things I learned from the radio show proved incredibly useful here, especially the ability to add tracks and move sound clips around as I needed them. Overall the technical parts of this assignment weren’t too difficult, but I wish I had a bit more experience with this program so that I could at least appease my perfectionist side (the levels of all the sounds aren’t as balanced as I’d like, for example).