Tuning a Room: Designs for Hearing According to Nancy Tobin

In this review, I discuss the architectonics of sound composition according to sound artist and designer Nancy Tobin. This chapbook advocates for a comprehensively integrated presence of a sound artist in the processes of rehearsal and espouses a dramaturgy of hearing. Tobin’s distinction between hearing and listening gives forth onto a series of self-studies of her experience of spatial and temporal arrangements presented in the form of e-mails to mentees. Her appreciation for the acoustics of the performance space extends to the composition of sound to be heard (on occasion as boldly interventionist) and the technologies of broadcasting it: the choice and placement of speakers, as well as their interaction with the performers. Tobin argues for a definition of sound composition for performance as a complex collaboration with the production—curatorial in terms of the space of ephemerality. My review concurs with the efficacy of her approach by my recognition of the moments in productions that have remained as some of the most memorable of my theatregoing.