The Merchant of Venice
by William Shakespeare
The Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018
Director: Melinda Pfundstein
Scenic Designer: Apollo Mark Weaver
Costume Designer: Bill Black
Lighting Designer: Michael Pasquini
Sound Designer/Composer: Joe Payne
Simple tones and drums with live keening was Melinda’s initial direction. Couple that with a strong directorial vision for the good, bad, and humanity in all of us, and you end up with something to be proud of. I owe much to the experimentation of singers Keaton Delmar Johns and Courtney McMullin, who took my melodies and sampled demo female voice and created something magical. Regretfully, we never got a recording of thier fantastic singing.
Review: What struck me most about the design of the show was the sound. Various performers would chant (or cantillate, I believe is a correct term for it). Their vocals lend strength and a depth of emotion to the competing chaos on stage. Joe Payne does a fantastic job weaving the Italian and Jewish cultures into more cohesion than the characters on stage could. His sound design is everything it needed to be, and more. Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Merchant of Venice is a standing-ovation-worthy production. The direction is superb, the acting is layered and reflective of the director’s vision, and the design creates a cohesion that is simple and miraculous. – Front Row Reviewers Utah By Jennifer Mustoe Article Link
Music and Effect Sequences
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Photos by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018.