Baby Sound Garden is a research creation hosted by WeeFestival
Where do sounds come from? And where do sounds go? What do sounds feel like? How do the sounds we make mix with the sounds around us? We are inviting babies 0-12 months and their caregivers to come explore with us in our sound garden for the senses.
WeeFestival Artistic Associate and Award-winning director and theatre creator Leora Morris, in collaboration with a composer and designer, invite you and your baby into an immersive, sensory and musical environment. Each session is approximately 30 minutes.
Some of the questions the team is exploring include:
- How can we explore the connection between the sensation of sound and the source of sound?
- How can we explore the different frequencies of sound (and different combinations of those frequencies) to create sustained tones, repetition & variation, harmony, pattern, pressure/release, dynamics).
- What about the relationship between sound of the bowls and the sound of a human voice (caregiver or baby). What happens when we move the bowls around in space?
- How does a baby’s sound influence/inform the space or the musician?
- Can we create a landscape of sound with different possibilities to be discovered through tactile invitations?
- What does it mean to have a space where care needs of the infant are really welcomed and folded in and anticipated?
Co-created by Leora Morris, Patrick Rizzotti and Christopher Ross-Ewart
About Leora Morris, Patrick Rizzotti & Christopher Ross-Ewart
LEORA MORRIS (she/her) is a director, dramaturg, and creator and a graduate of McGill, George Brown Theatre School, and Yale School of Drama (MFA Directing). She splits her time between Canada and the USA and has a particular interest in creating performance for babies, children, and young people. Most recently, as Yale Directing Fellow and then resident Artist in Education at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Leora directed Ride the Cyclone (Suzi Award Best Direction), Hey Willy See the Pyramids, Winnie-the-Pooh, Crossing Delancey, The Dancing Granny, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience, A Christmas Carol, and Christmas Carol: A Radio Drive-In. Other directing projects have included: Knives in Hens, Orphans (Coal Mine Theatre), The Philosopher’s Wife (Paradigm Productions, Dora nominee for Best Direction), Labour of Love (US premiere, Olney Theatre of Center), Spring Awakening (Connecticut College), He Left Quietly (2014 SummerWorks Best Production Award, Toronto), Amy and the Orphans, Women Beware Women, King John, Riverbank: A Noh Play for Northerly Americans (Yale School of Drama), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, love holds a lamp in this little room (Yale Cabaret), Horse (Toronto Fringe), as well as workshops and readings at Public Theater, Florida Studio Theatre, NYU Tisch, O’Neill Theatre Center, Theatre Emory, Theatrical Outfit and others. Leora is a recipient of the 2012 Ken MacDougall Award for Directing in Toronto and Yale’s 2016 Julian Milton Kaufman Prize in Directing. Leora was shortlisted for the international 2020-2022 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Prize in the Theatre category and currently resides in Vancouver where she is an assistant professor of directing/acting at UBC in Vancouver.
PATRICK RIZZOTTI (he/him) is a scenic designer working in live performance, film and television, and virtual/augmented/mixed reality. His process is highly collaborative, and he aims to build experiences that visually explore the relationship between the stories and the context in which they are told. He is currently researching how altering the physical relationship of a performance space (location, method of narrative delivery, the relationship between performer and audience, etc.) impacts the creative process and the audience experience. Select New York Designs Include: Snow Orchid and Money Grubbin’ Whores (Theatre Row), Jasper in Deadland (Prospect Theatre), Party In The USA, Victor Frange Presents Gas (Incubator Arts), Dukus (Target Margin Lab), Small World, Sex and Education, The Fabulous Lipitones, Asher Lev (Penguin Rep), Titanic (Westchester Broadway). Additional credits include: Pittsburgh Opera, Flat Rock Playhouse, Florida Repertory, South Carolina Children’s Theatre, North Carolina Stage Company, and Temple Theatre. Television Credits Include: America’s Got Talent, The Dr. Oz Show, The TODAY Show, Mysteries of Laura, and Make Me A Supermodel. Patrick has received the USITT Scenic Design Award, is a winner of the OPERA America Director-Designer Showcase, and a Lincoln Center Director’s Lab Alumni. M.F.A Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. Memberships: USA 829, Associated Designers of Canada.
CHRIS ROSS-EWART (he/him) is a sound designer, composer, and performer. His musical experience ranges from orchestral and chamber music to experimental electronic composition. Studying theatre at the University of Toronto introduced him to composition and sound design for theatre. He developed his practice further at the MFA program in Sound Design at Yale School of Drama. Now working across the US, Canada, and the world, his experience ranges from performer to composer to designer, in theatre, musical theatre, dance, film, podcasts and installation. He also works as a mental health worker at Insite, a safe injection site, and would love to talk to you about ending the war on drug users.
Visit the Leora Morris, Patrick Rizzotti & Christopher Ross-Ewart website
