DNAWORKS · Theatre
The Secret Sharer
“The production uses a powerful mix of nautical scene-setting, lighting, and sound design (Ray Archie) to place us on board the captain’s ship.”
The sound
An intimate sonic world bridging nineteenth-century maritime narrative with present-tense testimony — the ship rendered as a living entity, silence treated as dramaturgy.
The design operates in two registers. ‘Story time’ is processed, layered, and symbolic: hull resonance, creaking rigging, ocean swell, the vessel as a character. ‘Testimony time’ is unadorned human voice, stripped of all underscore. Leggatt’s hidden self is marked by a sonar ping — one to two seconds, a four-to-six-second reverb tail — that travels through the space; ritual is carried by live kalimba, bodhran, and bell. Near-silence is the dramaturgical default: peak dynamics occur exactly once, the Murder Dance, and FM radios distributed through the audience create a hyper-intimate undercurrent — whispered voiceover, heartbeat, sonar routed beneath listeners’ seats.
Press
“The production uses a powerful mix of nautical scene-setting (co-scenic designers Yu-Hsuan Chen and Ant Ma), lighting (Marika Kent), and sound design (Ray Archie) to place us on board the captain’s ship.”
Stage and Cinema · Lynne Weiss