“I’m writing these plays for myself, for my immediate family, for my extended family, for the Ibibio community,” Udofia said in a statement.
All nine plays in the cycle will be produced over the next two years, beginning with the Huntington Theatre’s production of “Sojourners” (Oct. 31-Dec. 1). Directed by Dawn M. Simmons, Udofia’s opening salvo introduces the matriarch of the family and the tensions involved in leaving the past behind.
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“The Ufot Family Cycle is a wonderfully crazy experiment – a test balloon for exploring our relationship to risk and the power and complexity of both collaboration and community activation over time,” Huntington artistic director Loretta Greco said in a statement. The Huntington is the leader of the two-year-long festival, which also includes ArtsEmerson, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Central Square Theatre, Front Porch Arts Collective, Wheelock Family Theatre, the Boston Arts Academy, and Wellesley Repertory Theatre, as well as universities, social organizations, non-profits, and community partners.
The festival is the culmination of two years of planning by the Huntington and will be the first time all nine plays can be seen and heard. The festival will include pop-up performances in Boston neighborhoods, audio plays, as well as conversations.
“What does it mean to activate an entire city with a unique diaspora story, a story of who we are that unfolds in nine parts, neighborhood to neighborhood over 24 months?” Greco asked in a statement. “My hope is along the way we can create a new paradigm towards working together to get big, messy, aspirational things done.” Boston’s Ufot Family Cycle | Boston Theatre Scene
Composing theatrical soundscapes
Composing, says award-winning theatrical sound designer Mackenzie Adamick, “is the art of storytelling.”
An eerie musical motif can generate goosebumps as much as any dialogue, while a melodic fanfare can inspire joy. The challenge for a theatrical sound designer is understanding the director’s vision and creating a soundscape that supports that vision without drowning it out.
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“When I meet with a director, the first question I ask is ‘Why this play now?’” says Adamick. “I read the script so that I understand the emotional arc of the play, but each director chooses a play for a specific reason, and my music needs to serve that.”
Although Adamick, 27, just graduated from Boston University with a master’s degree in sound design last month, she’s already making a mark on the Boston theater scene. She created a moody and evocative soundscape for “Let the Right One In,” a vampire tale co-produced by Actors’ Shakespeare Project and Boston University; created a stir earlier this year with her lullabies-meet-spooky magic for the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Stage II production of “A Midsummer Night’s” Dream” earlier this year; created music that helped ASP’s “As You Like It” really flow; and shared an Elliot Norton Award for her work with David Remedios on the sound design for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s “Macbeth,” which included snippets of melodies and atmospheric sounds. She returns to Boston Common this summer for CSC’s “The Winter’s Tale” (July 16-Aug. 4).
“Each production has its own challenges,” she says, “but after getting a sense of what a director is trying to accomplish, I develop a couple of short musical pieces with chord progressions, textures and timbres that I present to them. And then there’s a constant back and forth as we revise and refine.”
For “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” director Victoria Townsend framed the play “in a kind of familiar children’s bedtime storybook, from soothing stories to more ‘Coraline’-like adult themes of isolation and confusion,” Adamick says.
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“It was important that the audiences – mostly high school students who were seeing a Shakespeare play for the first time – could latch on to something familiar,” she says. “My music tapped familiar lullabies as well as pop songs, but added more darkness, referencing the spooky magic that happens in the play.”
The upcoming “Winter’s Tale” follows a clash between a pair of princes and requires two kingdoms that look and feel distinctly different from each other.
“[Director] Bryn Boice wants classical strings and woodwinds for one court while the other needs to have a Coachella or Lindsey Stirling vibe,” says Adamick. “My job is to blend those two styles. I present pieces to Bryn and she makes notes or suggestions.”
While Adamick is remarkably matter of fact about the acclaim her work is getting so early in her career, she is not new to composing, having been trained as a classical musician and has been writing music since 2018. She was the audio engineer with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival until the pandemic shut that down, and when she learned about BU’s MFA program, she thought the opportunities, connections and encouragement to get some professional experience while in the graduate program would be invaluable. Her teacher, David Remedios, hired her as his assistant sound designer for three shows at last year’s Contemporary American Theater Festival.
Although a good sound design can add greatly to the audience’s experience, Adamick says she probably feels less pressure than other members of the design team, such as set, lighting, and costumers.
“I can sit down at my piano at home and start composing,” she says. “I work on one theme at a time, and the process is pretty free form. I like to start developing motifs based on sonic colors. Introducing live sound is another element and allows even more creativity.”
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As for her own composing style and preference, Adamick says, “I like strings and some dark synthesizers. I love some grit.”
