Erik T. Lawson
I am an artist, a storyteller, and a teacher. I am passionate about music and sound, and prefer to work on diverse collaborative projects with strong social rhythms. I am inspired by creative processes promoting the development of art in which the performance is greater than the sum of its individual contributions.
I enjoyed a childhood filled with music and theatre. I was particularly fascinated by creative work investigating beauty at the intersection of music, noise, and sound collage. I collected musical projects exploring ambient textures, the musicality of found objects, and field recordings. I was significantly inspired by artists like Zoviet France, Brian Eno, and Einstürzende Neubauten. I discovered sound design for the theatre in college, it was the perfect art encompassing all of my creative interests: experimental and electronic music, composition, and dramatic performance.
Early in my design career I worked at the Cincinnati Playhouse. I learned about the value of focused collaboration by observing Ed Stern (artistic director) and Suann Pollack (stage manager) expertly guide actors and creative teams through demanding and powerful plays. The Playhouse developed forward-thinking projects, including productions of Gross Indecency, Wit, How I Learned to Drive, and The Laramie Project. The challenging plays had a great impact on the community. It was exciting to witness the incredible power of the theatre to unite people and inspire change.
I hold an MFA in Sound Design from Carnegie Mellon University. The graduate coursework at the School of Drama continues to influence my sound design and composition practice, especially the studies related to collaboration, experimental composition techniques, and devised and mediatized performance. Joe Pino, the sound design professor, inspired me to visually engage with sound design concepts. Graphic scores and visual stimuli are now a central element in all of my composition work. The design faculty, including Anne Mundell, Cindy Limauro, Dick Block, Joe Pino, Larry Shea, Narelle Sissons, and Susan Tsu, created a learning environment inspiring a lifetime of curiosity and creativity.
I am currently working on an international performance project, with a diverse creative team, exploring immigration and citizenship. We recently traveled to Norway, collaborated with local artists, and are developing a unique multi-national performance. My graduate education and professional experience guide much of my contribution to the project. The piece is a prime example of the type of creative work I am most inspired by, it is a highly collaborative storytelling performance addressing critical issues facing humanity.
Tsunami is a poignant docudrama that introduces the resilient people behind the front-page horrors of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster. These transformative stories, presented by a variety of actors from different cultures, portray unforgettable tales of survival, magic, and a heightened reverence for life. Tsunami was written by Nilo Cruz & Michiko Kitayama Skinner.
The original music and sound design for Tsunami explores the arrangement of broken objects and fragmented stories, and the spirit of the rebuilding process. The soundscore is composed from delicate piano and koto phrases, ambient sequences, and traditional Japanese percussion.
