Sequence
by Arun Lakra
Directed by Marshall Pailet

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Adirondack Theatre Festival
The Charles R. Wood Theater
July 23rd, 2019 - July 27th, 2019
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Scenic Design: Paul dePoo
Costume Design: Jolene Richardson
Lighting Design: Chelsie McPhilimy
Sound Design & Original Music: Brandon Reed
 ​Photos taken courtesy of Jim McLaughlin Photography

About The Play

Sequence is an edge-of-your-seat science thriller, where two stories intertwine like a fragment of DNA. In one thread, Time Magazine's Luckiest Man Alive has bet on the Super Bowl coin toss 19 years in a row. And won every time. Today, he is about to risk 880 million dollars on the 20th, until he fortuitously meets a young woman who claims to have figured out his mathematical secret. In our second thread, a blind professor has a late night mystery visitor by a student in a wheelchair, who, on his exam somehow got all their questions wrong, a 1 in 5 quintillion chance. 

Stem cell research, God, miniskirts, Fibonacci numbers, and football all meld and interplay in an intellectual cocktail. Belief systems clash, ideas recombine, mutate and evolve, and order springs from chaos. And the question is asked...in our lives, in our universe, and even in our stories, does order matter? 

The Sound Design

Building Blocks

Given that the play is full of moments that we see parallel thoughts, physical gestures, and references between the two pairs, we wanted the audience to be able to connect the dots. At the same time we wanted to underscore the ebb and flow of tension throughout the play. This served as the motivation for the sound design.

​Together the director and I worked to map out the connecting points. We recorded sounds the actors made interacting with the scenery and props (water drip from faucet, book tossed, a sand block, and a woodblock). When we saw moments from pair 1 referenced with pair 2, we played the sounds from pair 1 (and vice versa). As the two pairs start to blend, so did the sounds regardless of what was happening. An additional benefit was that depending on how the cues were called the loops and sounds created new underscoring every night.

​Lecture

Opening the play we have one member of each pair presenting a lecture establishing the themes and contents of the play. Is luck real or is everything in life a pre-established order we can't escape? Both having a "better-than-you" attitude, the director and I thought it would be funny to underscore the opening of their lectures with Sprach, which after easing the audience in, was immediately halted with a mirror shattering on stage defying expectation. As their lectures begin, they are underscored with an upbeat, driving passage I composed with an Array Mbira giving a scientific and intelligent sort of feel to their lecture.

​Brain Blast

An example of how the recorded loops made with the actors were used to establish tension and motivation to a very scientific and wordy play. Pair 2 argues that their is a predetermined order to luck thanks to math and science (an argument made earlier in the play by the teacher in pair 1). We have the water dripping from pair 1 to establish tension, while a driving beat made from the slamming of a book keeps the rhythm for the actor. Sand blocks were used whenever our pairs discussed God. A woodblock was used to help connect the audience with how quick her brain was moving in this moments of explanation.

​Tensions Rise

By the end of the play, our two pairs have almost seemingly blended together. Tension is at an all time high as several big revelations are made in how each character is connected with one another. Who will decide their fates God, Luck, or Science? All pending on one phone call. The thumping beat previously made with the book slam is replaced with a literal heartbeat, to really build tension. As we spiral into revelation after revelation, each of the loops are layered with their rhythms combining to create a sort of cacophony of music to match the cacophony that is happening on onstage. The pending phone call is heard as coins are tossed into the air. Who is right? Who is wrong?

​Sonic Boom

The climax, as we hear the deciding factor of one pair, the other pair rolls a dice to see the outcome. Guns raised at each other.

What happens is a slow build. The heartbeat that is underscoring the moment accelerates as guns are revealed and as they start raising them and shouting at each other, the loops are layered to add more tension. Finally all loops cease except for the heartbeat now at a higher rate as the dice is rolled. They look at it each other awaiting the outcome as we hear all the sounds played together several times raising in pitch and volume (flashing with lighting design). Finally just as we think they are about to pull the triggers, we blackout with extreme gunfire as we reverse in time winding back to the beginning of the play. Leaving the audience stunned. "What came first the chicken or the egg?" Mirror smashed. Blackout.