Nicole Belenski
Sound Designer — MAD FOREST
Nicole has served as Sound Designer for Mad Forest, Lighting Designer for Works A Foot 2018, and a Costume Designer for Works A Foot 2018 at Montclair State University (MSU). She was also Assistant Sound Designer for Michigan Murders(MSU), The Full Monty(MSU), The Haunting of Hill House (Metuchen Forum) and head of microphones for Plays in the Park in Edison NJ on Legally Blonde, West Side Story and Mary Poppins. Some other experiences she has been lucky enough to have include: Assistant Lighting Designer on Church and State, Hair, The Petrified Forest (Berkshire Theatre Group), Civics and Humanities for Non Majors (Montclair); Second Assistant Lighting Designer on Carrie the Musical (Montclair); Master Electrician on Works a Foot 2017(Montclair); and Assistant Master Electrician for both West Side Story and Aida (Montclair).
Nicole is originally from Woodbridge, NJ, is completing her undergraduate degree at Montclair State University, and is based in Edison, NJ.
MAD FOREST was directed by Susan Kerner for Montclair State University in March of 2017.
We wanted to emphasize the cyclical behavior of today’s society and to bring out the suppression, extreme rules, and the hate that these cause within part one of the play. We needed these factors to slowly build until part two, where the tension reaches its peak as the revolution happens, and to have it feel extremely personal and close to the audience. Following this, part three would show peoples confusion about what to do next, and how this causes them to resort to the old ways. By the end of the play it shows the hate that everyone felt at the beginning of the play, completing the cycle of hate. The set ended up being extremely open with only some columns causing for myself be be concerned with clarity of the actors dialogue. To help with this I made a microphone bubble by hiding microphones in the set to add clarity but not amplify the sound. This also allowed me to add microphone effects to the non human storytelling characters like the angel and the vampire. You can see these indicated in the pictures and drafting below.
