New Play “Oak” by Terry Guest, directed by Mikael Burke runs May 31st through June 30th at Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, Florida! [ Get Tickets ]

It’s 7pm. Do you know where your children are? It’s snatching season, and town-wide curfew regulations have fostered a culture of fear in the community along Odella Creek. Too many have fallen victim to the freedoms promised by the red-eyed monster…Will cousins Suga, Big Man, and Pickle resist temptation, or become the next names in the morning news? Step into the darkness and experience the terror firsthand in the new Southern Gothic horror, OAK. (from Urbanite Theatre‘s site)

Oak’s Cast
Suga – Jaeda LaVonne
Pickle – Trezure B. Coles
Big Man – William Rose II
Peaches – DeAnna Wright*

Headshots and bios here
*Member of Actors Equity Association 

Creative Team
Playwright – Terry Guest
Director & Video Designer – Mikael Burke
Production Stage Manager/ Prop Designer – Tori Heikenfeld
Production Manager/Technical Director/Light Designer – Alex Pinchin
Assistant Stage Manager – Fiona Coffey
Composer and Sound Designer – Brian Grimm
Sound Engineer – Rew Tippin
Costume Designer – Adrienne Pitts
Scenic Designer – Frank Chavez
Master Carpenter – Eugene Alcorn
Scenic Charge – Anna Baldwin Lack
Graffiti Artist – Kaitlin Kelly
Production Photos – Sorcha Augustine

special thank yous section at the bottom of the post

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“Oak” Urbanite Theatre production photos by Sorcha Augustine (c) 2024

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Composer and Sound Designer’s Notes

First off, let me say that I’m a huge fan of both Terry Guest’s scripts and Mikael Burke’s directing.  As a lover of horror films and scary sounds, I was thrilled to be brought on board for this project. In preparation for Oak, I carefully selected a variety of modern horror classics that resonate with the themes of this play. You can expect to hear hints of iconic elements from recent horror hits such as the ‘IT’ and ‘Candyman’ series (both original and new), along with films like ‘Get Out,’ ‘Suspiria,’ ‘La Llorona’, and Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ woven into the fabric of the sound design & score.

Looking for old ghost story traditions and songs with roots in Africa, I was drawn to the haunting legend of La Tunda.  This tale shares an eerie resemblance to the chilling swamp ghost featured in Oak. This living legend of the shape-shifting spectre La Tunda, who comes out from the woods after 7pm to snatch your children comes from within the African descendant communities in Ecuador and Colombia.  It’s also a direct parallel to the Mexican and Central American ghost story of La Llorona. All of the original music in this production, including the main themes for Odella, derive directly from the melodic motifs, chord progressions, and rhythms used in the folklore songs and dances which spin tales and warnings of La Tunda. 

Another unique feature of my design is that the immersive swamp sounds accompanying the ghost’s presence are all crafted from vocalizations by the cast.  I have manipulated their vocal noises and run them through custom made “animal filters” of frogs, snakes, alligators, cicadas, rain, thunder, and more! This technique aims to blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, offering a glimpse into the eerie auditory landscape experienced by the characters.

*warning, some plot and production spoilers below*

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Odella’s Whistle Themes

Since this entire process was completely remote for me, I decided to record some guided audio walkthroughs of my ideas for the Whistle Themes to send to the director, Mikael Burke. It was my first time doing something like this and it unintentionally created little podcast episodes, explaining and documenting the Whistle Theme process. I thought I’d share a version of episodes 2, 3 and 4 stitched together, for those who like that medium. Everything in the score for Oak comes out of these whistle themes:

Throughout the play, we hear Odella’s ghost whistling her entrancing lullaby from the swamp. These whistles serve as a constant reminder that she lurks in the distance, deep within the trees, waiting and ready to snatch you! During my initial research for similar ghost stories and lullabies within African descendant communities of the diaspora, I happened to be visiting my older brother and his family. As I described the story of Oak to them, my brother remarked how similar Terry’s swamp ghost Odella was to the Hispanic ghost story of La Llorona. Then my sister-in-law, who is from Ecuador, shared the parallel ghost story from where she grew up, called La Tunda. La Tunda is essentially the African counterpart of La Llorona. In the La Llorona ghost story, a mother drowns herself in the creek after her children accidentally drown there. In the La Tunda version, the mother loses her daughter deep in the woods of the mountain. After the tragedy, the mother returns as a ghost, emerging from the waters (La Llorona) or mountains (La Tunda), and shapeshifts to appear to children as their mother or close relative, enticing them to come to the waters/mountains so she can take the children away with her. Both La Llorona and La Tunda put the children in a trance, promising that everything will be alright in the water/mountain if they come with her. The ghost haunts on, perpetually searching for her lost children.

I couldn’t believe it; this was exactly like Odella’s ghost story in Oak, you just had to swap the woods or waters for the creek in the swamp. The similarities didn’t end there! My sister-in-law shared that growing up, they were all afraid to be outside after 7 pm. Once it got dark, they would rush home, fearing that La Tunda was real and would come to get them! Similarly, in the world of Oak, there is a siren alarm that goes off at 7pm every day to remind parents of the curfew and ensure their children make it home safely. It turns out there are several different La Tunda songs that recount her ghostly tale and issue warnings to the listener—so I wanted to start with those songs to see what sort of material could work for Odella’s whistle theme.

There are two parts of Odella’s main Whistle Theme. The first part of the phrase | C D— | C E— | (in solfege: do re—, do mi —) come from the background vocals in this song. You can hear them singing “La Tunda—- (do re, re—) La Tunda—- (do mi, mi—-)”. Which I simplified to the phrase you see above. I love the main vocalist and story teller in this rendition of the La Tunda song:

Chord Progression: from this first tune I utilized the spooky and fun diminished to minor chord progression. This chord progression can be seen in two ways, G# diminished to A minor which gives us more of a ghostly flavor. Or if you add an E in the bass of the first G# diminished chord, it turns it into an E7 chord. This stabilizes the progression by both chords sharing the E in the bass note, becoming an E7 to A- chord progression. I mostly leaned into the dissonance of the G# diminished flavor throughout the production.

The second part of Odella’s main Whistle Theme comes from this video of a La Tunda dance. We hear again in the background vocals some lyrics about La Tunda; the musical phrase is ||: – EEEE | F D – :|| (mi mi mi mi fa re – in the first tune’s key). In this lively dance, we see the ghost entrances the kids on stage, then ventures out to the audience and scares the kids so bad they start running away!

When combined together the themes go as such:
| C D— | C E— | EEEE | F D —- |
When transformed to be a little more melodic, it goes like this:
| C D — | C E — | C E F D —- |
Here is another melodic variation in a 3 count:
| C D – | C E – | D E E | F D – |

Bass Line: There is also an amazing 1/2 step bass line in this second tune which sometimes leads from G# up to A on the last beat of a measure to the down beat, and sometimes leads from Bb down to A. I use both motions quite extensively throughout the score of Oak for tension. Sometimes in series | Bb A—-| G# A—-| and sometimes in parallel with a double stop of Bb and G# together, resolving in a pure A octave!

Olélé Moliba Makasi – a Congolese lullaby.
I also searched for some West African lullabies that could complement these La Tunda whistle themes. After delving into various lullabies, I stumbled upon one from the Congo, coming from slightly further south than my initial search area. However, it resonated so well with the existing La Tunda themes that it became the perfect way to begin the original version of Odella’s theme. In the opening of the play, we hear the origin story of Odella. She was an enslaved person in America during the 17 or 18 hundreds who became impregnated by her master, and subsequently punished for it. Determined to escape the plantation, she faces the toughest decision of her life: to remain a slave and care for her baby, or to make a run for freedom, albeit leaving her child behind. She ultimately chooses freedom, soothing the child with this lullaby as she flees, whistling it from a distance.

The main melody we hear fits exactly with the existing La Tunda phrases:
||: C—D E – | C—D E, DE | D—, CD | C—- :||

The entire score for Oak, including all chords, scales, rhythms, and melodic material, is derived directly from the main elements of these La Tunda and Olélé Lullaby tunes. Of course, I am breaking them down into basic music elements and then recombining or twisting them to fit the needs of the production, but everything originates from the wellspring of this source material. In my notebook pages above, you can see that I created some scary hybrid scales, combining all the various note combinations of La Tunda themes, Olélé themes, and some other whistle intervals I had independently been developing. The La Tunda material is used when Odella (or the Wolf) is more threatening or “snatching” a child, while the Olélé lullaby themes are utilized when Odella is attempting to hypnotize the children to come with her.

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Odella’s Music

Accompanying Odella, Oak’s swamp ghost, you will hear scary vocalizations from the cast, along with Odella’s Snatching Theme. This theme is based on the E F D note motif from the 2nd La Tunda tune discussed above, played here on the guzheng zither. These snatching themes are sometimes played with dulcimer hammers to create an eerie piano sound, while other times they are plucked with steady rhythm during Odella’s “trances”. Throughout the production, variations of these trances are used when Odella is attempting to charm the children. In the later trance portion of this cue, you can especially hear the sweetness of the Olélé Lullaby themes, as Odella tries to persuade the main character that everything will be just right down in the swamp waters if she but comes with her.

Here is the original sketch of Variations on Odella’s “Snatching Theme”. Some of these sections were utilized as the top of show theme and at the moments of a child being snatched by Odella.

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The 7pm Siren

“It is 7pm, do you know where your children are?…”

Heard everyday in Oak across the swamp, this siren cue is made entirely out musical instruments. It includes 12 string guitar played with brass slide and distortion, cello siren wails, and bawu flute manipulated to sound like the buzzing alarm. The siren voice features the haunting vocals talents of Rebecca Rose Mims. I really love how this cue turned out, one-and-done!

˄ Keep an ear out for her, hopefully recorded for a book on tape near you soon, cause her voice is amazing!

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The Princess and the Wolf

This cue deals with the trauma of a young survivor of sexual assault. In the show it is narrated by the cast and accompanied by a video projection of a paper puppet show. (Mikael edited it together and it looks incredible!!) The use of a puppet show is mentioned in the script and our production’s vision for it was inspired by the recent Candyman film. In both cases, it serves as a way to present trauma and violence against Black bodies, but with a visual layer of removal, acting as a defensive storytelling barrier. This approach aims to tell the story and spark conversation without completely triggering audience members (or those performing). In Candyman, the subject matter is of public brutality against Black people, whereas in this production, it deals with rape by a family member.

Given the title and the orchestrated storytelling, I couldn’t help but draw inspiration from Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” for narrator and orchestra. This piece has several cartoon adaptations and is in spirit with the puppet show concept. It absolutely influenced the brass chords accompanied by cymbal roll crescendos during moments where the Wolf appears. This storytelling method also resonates with Little Red Riding Hood themes and it parallels the Odella snatching scene at the end of the play.

All the chords and melodies in this cue stem from the Odella (La Tunda) Whistle Themes variations.

As part of the Wolf’s growl sound, you will hear a man’s zipper unzipping.

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1st Lady Temple’s Swamp Environment, Cast Vocalizations & Animal Filters

For the scene introducing the enigmatic character 1st Lady Temple, I envisioned a swamp environment built entirely out of pre-recorded vocalized sounds made by the cast. This concept drew inspiration from Terry’s idea of the playful diy theater we create as children. Terry wanted to capture the vast imagination we possess as kids and how immense that world felt. I asked the cast to individually record a set of vocalizations including sirens, vocal tones, grunts, whispers, various animal sounds, and swamp sounds mentioned in the script. I then edited and manipulated these sounds to create the majority of the textures for both Odella and 1st Lady Temple. I wanted emotions like the fear, suspense, and danger that the cast is feeling to be manifested externally from the sounds and voices in her own head, much like the psychological terror in IT. When a character’s imagination takes over, the audience hears the soundscapes that the characters themselves imagined.

This approach, combined with another technique I called “animal filters”, resulted in one of the show’s most distinctive sound profiles. I began by manipulating the cast’s vocalizations to sound as close as possible to the real animal and swamp sounds they imitated. Then, I processed these sounds through “animal filters.” I created these filters by feeding different sounds—snake hisses, alligator growls, cicada calls, frog and toad croaks, and even landscape elements like calm lakes and thunderstorms—into a convolution reverb. Instead of using a traditional reverb impulse-response file, I loaded these natural sounds, allowing the vocalizations to be filtered through these real animal or environmental sounds. Instead of putting the source sound into a hall or room or other space like a normal reverb would, I was putting it inside of a swamp sound or animal noise.

This process not only altered the sounic profile of the original audio but also imprinted a subtle “ghost” of the filter’s own animal sound, creating a more intriguing and layered auditory experience. I used this extensively throughout the show to craft a unique swamp soundscape. Not only were the cast’s vocalizations filtered like this, but I also applied this treatment to all of Odella’s whistles, as well as the music instrument parts for the cello, 12-string guitar, and guzheng zither. This gave everything a cohesive, swampy animal filter reverb effect and really filled out the environment around the individual sounds.

Here are some examples of what that filtering effect sounds like.

Jaeda’s distressed bird sound. First plays the original, then examples are filtered through: warning croak of a frog, baby crocodile sound, barking tree frog, pig frog, two different snake hiss noises, the sound of rain, and sound of a calm lake. You’ll notice that through the filter, not only do you get the bird sound, but it comes with an environment surrounding it, a very powerful sound effect:

Next up is another creative sound from Jaeda! It’s a mosquito sound which became a sort of “mosquito violin” during the 1st Lady Temple and Odella scenes. Again first the original sound that was recorded, and then examples of it being filtered through an alligator roar, pig frogs, fowler toad, two different cicada sounds, a chorus of frogs at night in a swamp, and two different rain and thunder sounds:

The Whispers I had the cast record display very well the effects of these animal/swamp filters. Here are two different whisper environments run through a bunch of these filters. It’s the same chunk of the track and the filter changes about every 20 seconds, so you can skip around to quickly sample some different filter sounds – or if you are freaky like me, put this on while you are working on emails, or doing chores…

Swamp Whispers 1 – 15 filters

Swamp Whispers 2 – 13 filters

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Night Terrors (1912 Atlanta)

Here, the 1912 version of the 7pm siren goes off as we transition into Big Man’s nightmare. This time, the siren cue incorporates real siren and police car sounds. To create the night terror texture, I utilized and manipulated a recording of Louis Armstrong and his Hot 7 playing a tune called “You’re Next.” The title perfectly fit the scene’s theme, where Big Man has a nightmare about the “Atlanta Ripper,” and the original track itself has a spooky undertone.

Although I initially believed this track was recorded between 1912 and 1915, I later discovered it was actually recorded in 1926—about a decade and a half later than the 1912 mark. Despite this, it was the closest match to what I envisioned and the first sound that came to mind for this scene.

The soundscape includes Odella’s whistle theme, twisted low bass harmonics, 12-string guitar accents highlighting specific lines, and dramatic horror cellos at the end.

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As always, I put a lot of effort, time and care into my work. My scores and sound design go deep and are full of many layers. I do intend to put this out as a soundtrack and along with many other scores from the recent productions over the last 3 years. So please don’t download any of these tracks just yet, kindly wait till I release them officially to buy them! There is a lot going on in my life right now that has delayed these soundtrack releases – so thank you for your patience.

Much more on the way!

❤️ Brian

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Special Thank Yous

For the first time on any production, I was remote/virtual for the entire process. It was a tougher room to mix than I had anticipated being that it is an L shaped room with an 11 speaker setup. Plus, it was a room I have never been in before, on a setup I’ve never heard, so there was a limit to how much I could envision the room and rough mix or conceptualize ahead of time. Plus! Zoom did such a fantastic job of cancelling out “noise” (aka my design), so much so that everytime we played back my sound or music cues, I could not hear it… the only thing I could hear was the actor’s voices. On top of that, I couldn’t see any wave forms in the remote control / zoom screen shared view of Qlab…. so it was quite an interesting and difficult experience to neither hear or nor see any of my sounds and still make adjustments. Wild! So an EXTRA SPECIAL THANK YOU goes out to Rew Tippin, who was the onsite sound engineer helping me mix and make adjustments in Qlab. I absolutely could not have done this show without you!!! Thanks for your amazing collaboration, advice, adjustments and perspective on the sounds in the space. It was so easy to communicate and work with you!

Unrelated, it was an extra stressful process due to a tornado rolling through Madison two nights before Tech started. This left me without power for 4 days, which obviously doesn’t work if you are trying to Zoom into work all day long! So another big thank you goes out to my parents, Rick and Bea, who allowed me and Zelda dog to take over their basement in order to have power and internet to complete my tech duties for about 5 days.

Another special thanks to Alex Pinchin, who on top of his duties of Production Manager, Technical Director, and Light Designer, was super responsive to any needs that I had from a distance during Tech. Alex also helped as an on site operator after hours when we worked on the live mic vocal effects for both the Wolf and Odella. Thanks for all that you do! I think we both learned some things on that mixer setup for this show!

Thanks to everyone at Urbanite Theatre on this production, the cast and crew, Mikael and Terry – y’all are amazing and I wish I could have been there in person to work with you all! ~ much love!

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*Bonus Material for anyone who made it this far… here are a few other of my favorite La Tunda jams I was listening to >>

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