This portion is underscoring for a monologue by the step-mother describing the forest outside the castle to Snow White and its dangers. The sounds of tree limbs groaning, leaves crackling, and eventually monsters howling creep in around the audience for this monologue to then be cut away as the step-mother misspeaks and breaks the environment she created.
This sound is from the potion the step-mother makes to poison Snow White. The potion making is underscored, so this is one of the moments I added on top to accent the addition of ingredients to the potion. The director told me to use the sounds from The Emperor’s New Groove as inspiration. I told the sounds of water bubbling, a processed water drop, an electrical short circuit pop, and some water boiling to layer to create the sound.
This is the final battle with the step-mother. This script has her being carried away by birds. For the tour version, this meant the birds were primarily portrayed by the sound. The script describes some of the birds arriving in a gradual escalation of size, so I did include the calls of those mentioned birds as well as a variety of others in similar sizes. It proceeds from robins up to “great birds of prey”. I edited some of the recordings to get a bit more viciousness conveyed as the dry recordings sounded more like a botanical garden than birds disposing of the evil step-mother.
Snow White
Florida Studio Theatre
Keating Theatre: Jan. 3 – Feb. 20 2026
Touring: Oct. 30, 2025 – Feb. 17, 2026
Director: Dellan Short
Music Direction & Song Composition: Nathaniel Beliveau
Underscoring Composition: Jim Prosser
In House Stage Manager: Tori Martinson
Tour Stage Manager: Leigh Womack
Tour Coordinator: Kacy Jones
Scenic Design: Casey Seilar
Costume Design: Julia Hornsby
Props Designer: Audrey Smith
Lighting Design: Kate Landry
Sound Design: Nicholas Ryan
Photos: Sorcha Augustine
This show opened first as a touring show to schools before opening in house in the Keating Theatre in repertory with the mainstage show. As the tour only had the two actors running sound with a Bluetooth remote, there adaptions to the sound design to make things as convenient as possible for the actors. Many of the sound cues were tied to physical motions to help make the timing be consistent, such as the actors mimics chopping wood and cueing the sound effect on the impact. Parts of the show were underscored by Jim Prosser which made the actors’ timing consistent enough that some cues could be tied to the underscoring track with auto follows and delays. For the in house version, there was a stage manager taking the cues which allowed more refinement for places as well as coordinating the design to work with the lighting design.
The actors were body-mic’ed for both the tour and in house versions. The Keating Theatre usually relies on angel mics for amplification, but I wanted to use body mics to have more gain before feedback. Using the angel mics would have required reducing many of the sound effect levels to allow audibility for the actors. Additionally, I wanted to be able to use some vocal effects with the body mics for some of the roles. Since the show is designed for children, I didn’t want to reduce the impact and immersion by reducing the levels. I was able to coordinate the frequency ranges of the mics to allow the touring mics to sync to the Keating receivers to fit with what the mainstage also in the Keating needed. This made the changeover process very smooth.
This show takes a very heightened style, so many of the sound effects I designed for this are exaggerated beyond and outside of reality. One early example of this is the exposition of Snow White’s mother dying. Her mother’s death is told twice since Snow White interrupts. Both of those mentions were accompanied by a funeral bell. To finish the rule of three, the third funeral bell hit when it is told her father remarried with a much larger bell peal. This exaggeration is also shown in the times the actors are playing the magic mirror. The arrival of the mirror was accompanied by a chimes I reversed and did some effects on, and the voices of the actors had delay and reverb added.
Nicholas Ryan 