Artist Statement
The landscape of Little Thing Big Thing spans from Nigeria to the Irish countryside to the inner city streets of Dublin, and from the interiors of corporate and civic buildings to the refuge of a church.
In the music and sound design we hoped not only to convey a sense of place as the characters Martha and Larry weave their way through the physical and psychological terrain of this political thriller, but also to evoke a sense of the spiritual atmosphere surrounding them as they search for the Big Thing.
The soundscape was originally influenced to an extent both by Shona music and by modern film music. The former representing the ancestors and ancient influences in the story and the latter informing the tension and current time pressure that is incumbent on Martha and Larry.
Many recordings for the production were made in Dublin and its surrounding areas, and the two actors also recorded their voices for certain parts of the play where displacing the actors voices from their physical presence helped to tell the story. The aim was to reduce the sounds to their simplest form in order to create a theatrical language that supported the journey of the play.
