Megumi Katayama
Sound Designer — SPINE LINES AWAKE
Megumi Katayama is a Sound Designer, Engineer, Composer. Her recent sound design and composition credits include Henry VI, Part 3, The Winter’s Tale, Sweat, and Dwight Edgewood Project (Yale School of Drama); Designer for El Huracán, Associate Designer for Field Guide with Rude Mechs, Assist.Designer/Engineer for Mary Jane and Seven Guitars (Yale Rep); The Whale in the Hudson, Untitled Ke$ha Project, Non-Player Character, KMS, Fuck Her, One Big Breath, The Red Tent, The Quonsets, Current Location (Yale Cabaret.) Her wide interests have also led her to work on installations, dance pieces, games, and films. She holds a B.F.A. in theater from the University of Central Oklahoma.
Megumi is originally from Kanagawa, Japan, is currently completing her MFA in Sound Design at Yale School of Drama, and is based in New York City and New Haven, CT.
SPINE LINES AWAKE was created in concert with artist Manuel Neri, at the Yale University Art Gallery in April 2018.
Life-sized human sculptures at the exhibition titled Manuel Neri: The Human Figure in Plaster and on Paper attracted my collaborate Erin and me when we first encountered them. Erin had an idea of bringing movements and colors to Neri’s figures through projection, which became the beginning of our installation. After spending some time observing the figures and taking in the gallery’s quiet, white-based exhibit space, we explored different ways of entering into Neri’s world and “awakening” them through sounds and projections. We decided to lean into haunting energy as a medium to bring life to the human figures, in response to the materials, the color, and the classic yet abstract shapes and expressions of the sculptures that are fragile, fragmented, and missing small parts here and there.
