Conversations with Sound Designers

Dan Balfour is an Olivier Award Nominated Sound Designer, whose work explores the intersection of storytelling and form. His practice investigates how aural design, technical craft, and composition converge to shape and heighten an audience’s theatrical experience. Theatre Includes: Winter’s Tale (RSC); Vanya (West End, Lucille Lortel NYC); Dear England (National, West End, Tour); The Maids, The Cherry Orchard (Donmar, St Anne’s Warehouse NYC); More Life (Royal Court); Miss Myrtles Garden (Bush Theatre); Stranger Beasts, I Am Kevin (Wildworks); My English Persian Kitchen (Soho); Make Good, One Of Them Ones, IDYLL (Pentabus); Mrs Caliban (Theatre Technic); Wuthering Heights (Royal & Derngate/ Tour); Les Dawson Flying High (National Tour); Dear Annie I Hate You, How To Break Out of a Detention Centre (Riverside Studios); Private Peaceful, LAVA (Nottingham Playhouse/ Tour); Two Character Play, Wilderness (Hampstead); The Hatchling (Trigger Productions); hang (Sheffield Crucible); Counting Sheep (Belarus Free Theatre); Sugar Syndrome, The Misfortune Of The English (Orange Tree); Operation Mincemeat (Splitlip); Effigies of Wickedness (Gate); The Double Act, Great Apes, Sputnik Sweetheart, I Call My Brothers, Dance Of Death (Arcola).

Jonathan Deans is an English sound designer with a wealth of experience whose career has been in the UK and USA.He is a five-time Tony award nominee, winning in 2025 for Buena Vista Social Club,and has won countless other awards.His work spans musical productions on Broadway, West End and worldwide, as well as plays and spectacles, including 16 productions for Cirque de Sole.His recent musicals include: Redwood, Buena Vista Social Club, and Hippist Trip the Soul train musical.His ability to create immersive soundscapes has earned him a reputation as one of the leading sound designers in the entertainment industry.He's known for his attention to detail and ability to seamlessly integrate sound into the production's overall concept, elevating the music and audience's experience.Jonathan has taught and created graduate and undergraduate theater sound design courses at UCLA, UNLV and UCSD and has given lectures at many conventions.In addition to being a freelance sound designer, he's recently started working with Meyer sound to develop future software for the sound industry.

John Leonard produced his first sound design in September 1972 for a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company's Little Theatre. Since then, he has: produced countless soundtracks for theatres around the world; spent eleven years with the Royal Shakespeare Company; worked regularly as a freelancer for the Almeida Theatre, Hampstead Theatre and Donmar Warehouse; written articles and a book about theatre sound and developed a sideline in recording sound effects. He is a Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, an Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and a Companion of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.

Donato Wharton is a Sound Designer and Musician, he was born in Cardiff Wales in 1976, he grew up in Worthing West Sussex and went to school in Stuttgart in southern Germany. Donato's career as a musician, and his life in theatre began in Stuttgart. Donato's music spanning the genres of Alternative Rock, Hip Hop, Electronica, Digital Ambient and Filed Recording based music has been published on several labels. The first of these releases is from 1995 and his music has been used in radio features, television programs, theatre productions and art installations internationally. Donato trained for Sound Design in Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and holds an MSC in Digital Composition and Performance from the Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh. As a Sound Designer Donato works almost exclusively in theatre, his work has been heard at major theatre in the UK and abroad in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the US. Donato also teaches Sound Design, is a lecturer in Sound Design and Production at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, has also given lectures and workshops at the Royal Academy of Art, the Royal College of Artand the Ruskin School of Art Oxford, amongst others. Donato is a native speaker of both English and German, he lives in Reading, Berkshire and is married and has a son.

Alexandra Faye-Braithwaite is a sound designer and composer working across theatre, tv and radio. As well as bespoke audio projects born in Lancashire and brought up in Yorkshire. She now calls Manchester home she’s worked all across the UK including the The Royal Court, The Young Vic, The RSC, The Royal Exchange , The West End, Sheffield Crucible and more as well as internationally, most notably in Beirut Lebanon

Ian Dickinson is an Olivier Award winning, Tony Nominated Sound Designer for Theatre. He has an extensive catalogue of work, with key and frequent collaboration with The National Theatre, Harper Eliot/ Marianne Elliot, Mathew Dunster and Ian Rickson. He is a resident designer for the London based sound company Autograph Sound, and in the past has been Head of Sound at the Royal Court, the Lyceum theatre in Edinburgh and Deputy Head of Sound at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester. He works in both the subsidised and commercial sector across musicals and, more frequently, with content based productions. His most notable success include Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time (National Theatre, West End and Broadway), Company (West End and Broadway), Jerusalem (Royal Court, West End and Broadway?), Angels in America (National Theatre and Broadway) and Oceans at the End of the Lane (National Theatre and West End).

Tony is a London based Theatre Sound Designer specialising in Musicals, Plays and live music events. Tony has been working in the Theatre industry for over 30 years after entering the industry after a short lived professional football career. He has a City & Guilds in Sound Engineering and a BTEC National Diploma in Stagecraft. Theatre backstage diversity and inclusion activism features heavily in Tony's career. He is currently one of 3 Co-Directors of Stage Sight and founder membee of industry based advisory and recruitment group, The Audio Cartel. He is supported and inspired by his family, who have enabled him to thrive and enjoy his work. Tony is a twice British Black Theatre Award recipient, Alfred Fagan Black Champion and has been nominated for several of his Sound Designs.

Paul Arditti is a sound designer working on plays and musicals. He won a Tony Award for Billy Elliot The Musical on Broadway, and has received several other Tony nominations, most recently for The Inheritance, with his co-designer Chris Reid. Amongst his other awards are four Drama Desks, two Oliviers and an Evening Standard.Following a degree in English and Drama at the University of Hull, Paul immediately started working in theatre. His design career has spanned nearly 40 years, kicking off with three years in the National Theatre’s sound department in the 80s, and eight years as Head of Sound at the Royal Court Theatre in the 90s under Stephen Daldry and later, Ian Rickson.Mostly, Paul has been freelance, with the majority of his work heard in the theatres of London and New York. Paul is a founding member of the ASD, and currently an Associate at the National Theatre.

In this first episode we talk to Melanie Wilson. Melanie is is a U.K. based multi-disciplinary performance maker. Her acclaimed work is founded on the contemporary interplay between sound art, experimental forms of composition, language and live performance. Melanie collaborates with artists and companies across theatre, film, opera and installation, creating highly crafted sound works at varying scale from main house auditoria to intimate podcasts. She is a long term collaborator with director Katie Mitchell. Melanie is currently developing a choral work that uses AI to explore the human relationship with non-human species, as part of Sound and Music's New Voices composer programme. Melanie's recent collaborations include little scratch, dir. Katie Mitchell (Hampstead Theatre: score), Unsere Zeit, dir. Simon Stone (Residenztheatre, Munich: score), Extinct, dir. Kirsty Housley (Theatre Royal Stratford East: soundtrack) Current Rising, dir. Netia Jones (ROH: libretto); Where I Go (When I Can't Be Where I Am), dir. Rachel Bagshaw (BBC Culture in Quarantine: score) and Orlando dir. Katie Mitchell (Schaubühne, Berlin: soundtrack). Melanie’s own recent work includes Women of Record (A Woman’s Place Exhibition, Knole House), Opera for the Unknown Woman (Wales Millennium Centre/UK tour) and Landscape II (Dublin Festival/UK tour). Melanie is also the Chairperson of the Association of Sound Desingers