When the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically shifted the landscape of live performance in March 2020, Lightning Rod Special began experimenting with new forms of remote collaboration. The result was Sound Break, a series of stand-alone audio works that bring LRS’s explosive and trickster style into the audio medium. Sound Break is available online, free to all.

SOUND BREAK audio works include:

Nosejob
We Are Trying to Reach You
SUPERHOST

SOUND BREAK
Co-Directors: Mason Rosenthal, Scott R. Sheppard, Alice Yorke
Sound Supervisor: Jaechelle Johnson
Project Manager: Lawryn LaCroix
Graphic Designer: Jesse Armine

NOSEJOB

Nosejob invites you to light a candle. 

Step into your fantasy.

You love it so much.

Right? 

You do like your fantasy, don’t you?

It is yours, isn’t it?

Crossing medieval legend with American sexual politics, Nosejob tells the story of a 9th century abbey of nuns who cut off their noses to repel a pack of rapacious vikings, and a 21st century college where boys are “burying” their faces in girls’ cleavage as part of a schoolwide prank. At the center of this wicked satire is college student Devon Chase, a feminist in search of a fantasy life she can live with.

Nosejob charts the contours of consent, power, and fantasy to ask what has changed about rape culture in the last 13 centuries?

NOSEJOB CREATIVE TEAM

Nosejob is presented by Lightning Rod Special as part of Sound Break

Co-Writers: Lee Minora and Scott R. Sheppard
Director: Nell Bang-Jensen
Co-Creators: Nell Bang-Jensen, Lee Minora, Matteo Scammell, Scott R. Sheppard
Performers: Cathy Ang, Melanye Finister, Annette Hammond, Lee Minora, Matteo Scammell, Scott R. Sheppard, Leah Walton
Sound Designer: Kathy Ruvuna
Creative Producer: Mason Rosenthal
Special thanks to The Drama League, and to Alex Bechtel, Mark Valenzuela, and Nathaniel Kent for their guest performances.

WE ARE TRYING TO REACH YOU

Centered around actual voicemails left on Lead Artist Katie Gould’s phone while she was undergoing in vitro fertilization, We Are Trying to Reach You is an original audio work that dives into the medical, financial, and emotional realities of one woman’s experience with infertility. Making the personal public, We Are Trying to Reach You casts listeners as a patient besieged by a litany of medical information, overwhelming advice, and conflicting emotions. Though silence and stigma around infertility abound, the CDC reports that “12% of women aged 15 to 44 years in the United States have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term.”

With bracing intimacy, We Are Trying to Reach You lifts the veil of secrecy, inviting listeners into deeply personal moments of heartbreak, rage, compassion, and hope. In Lightning Rod Special’s signature explosive style, witness the buzzing chaos that one woman faces as she strives to start a family.

WE ARE TRYING TO REACH YOU CREATIVE TEAM

Lead Artist: Katie Gould
Created by Katie Gould, Madeleine Oldham, and Alice Yorke
Director: Alice Yorke
Sound Designer: Madeleine Oldham
Performer: Lori Felipe-Barkin
Featured Music: “Stranger” by GANG: written and produced by GANG (Amanda Damron, Jaclyn McGraw, Nicole McGraw, Tim Sonnefeld), recorded at Milkboy The Studio in Philadelphia, PA. “They Say Wait” by Katie Gould with accompaniment by Alex Bechtel. Additional music by composer and cellist Brent Arnold.
Creative Producer: Scott R. Sheppard
Special Thanks: Cyrus Wolanske for his guest performance, Margot Melcon, Tyler Marandola and all of the friends, family, nurses, and doctors that helped Katie through her journey.

SUPERHOST

SUPERHOST CREATIVE TEAM

Lead Artist + Director + Composer: Alex Bechtel
Sound Designer + Engineer: Twi McCallum
Co-Creators/Performers: nicHi douglas, Katie Gould, Justin Jain, Jaime Maseda, Bailey Roper, Mason Rosenthal, Scott R. Sheppard, Chinaza Uche, Alice Yorke
Graphic Designer: Alice Yorke