Sound design for Geoff Sobelle's FOOD.
This piece is inspired by my love for model railroad builders and the intricacy of the worlds they make.
The show consists of 12 speakers surrounding a table, and multiple speakers hidden within a table to activate a pretty darned special dinner.
Photos by Maria Baranova
FOOD is an intimate dinner party performance that uses smell, taste, touch and audience instruction to feed a meditation on the ways and whys of eating. Why do you eat what you eat? Where does it come from? What does it really cost? At the heart of FOOD is an immense dinner table, surrounded by audience members. With a signature theatrical flavor combining rigorous design and stage illusion with an absurdist sense of humor, FOOD pulls you directly into the mystery of how we find ourselves at this end of the salad bar. From the naked earth emerge herds of bison eclipsed by fields of wheat, blown by bowls of dust, buried under train-lines and subdivisions, crops and companies, farms and factories, plantations and superstores - all growing from the ground, spilling into kitchens, piling onto your plate, forked into your hungry hungry mouth.
FOOD is the third of a trilogy of performance works that explore the uncommon-ness of common themes. The Object Lesson (2013), HOME (2017) and FOOD (2022) each in their own way create a place for the audience to meditate on their personal relationships to a given subject - things, dwelling, eating… One through-line of these shows is a way that the public find themselves at the center of the performance. Each show is designed for some people to watch other people inhabit well-known spaces (a storage facility, a house, a dining table), to hear each other work out memories at the microphone, and to drink wine together. There is always an element of chance in these works, and - admittedly - some nights are more interesting than others. But that’s sort of the point… I suppose it’s more about the potential than the actual thing. Something like that. Regardless, people are just endlessly interesting, aren’t they?
FOOD – Creative Team
Created & performed by Geoff Sobelle
Co-Director, Lee Sunday Evans
Co-Creator/Magician, Steve Cuiffo
Sound Design, Tei Blow
Original Lighting Design, Isabella Byrd
Additional Lighting Design, Devin Cameron
Props Creation, Jessie Baldinger, Julian Crouch, Steve Cuiffo, Nathan (Pierre) Lemoine, Raphael Mishler, Connor O’Leary, Geoff Sobelle, Matthew Soltesz, Christopher Swetcky
Chandelier Creation, Steven Dufala
Associate Sound Design, Ryan Gamblin
Creative Stage Manager, Lisa McGinn
Production Manager/Technical Director, Chris Swetcky
Creative Producer, Jecca Barry
FOOD is commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), FringeArts Philadelphia, Allen & Meghan Thorpe, and Garth Patil. Additional support provided by the Wyncote Foundation. Developmental support provided by Mercury Store.
