Graduate Sound Design
Created by the design faculty and led by sound designer Shahrokh Yadegari, the program fuses training in composition, the use of advanced technology and collaborations with directors, dancers, playwrights and other artists. The department’s strong orientation towards production will provide extensive practical experience designing productions and the department’s partnership with the La Jolla Playhouse will extend to MFA Sound Designers the opportunity to work alongside professionals.
We aim to redefine the place of sound in theatre by integrating the state-of-the-art real-time audio/visual technology within our highly acclaimed training and production curriculum. The theatre and dance department at UCSD is ranked among the top three graduate programs in the nation in theatre studies by U.S. News & World Report.
Through the program's close ties with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (www.calit2.net) and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (www.crca.ucsd.edu) at UCSD, sound design graduate students will have access to some of the most advanced computing facilities and audio/video technologies available. Students in this program will have the opportunity to participate in four or five fully supported and professionally realized productions during their eight quarter tenure at the program, including at least one guaranteed professional gig as an assistant sound designer at the Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse.
In their first year, design students will attend design classes (scenic, costume, lighting, and sound) and collaborative classes with actors, directors, playwrights, and stage managers. They will also participate in our highly acclaimed Balwin New Play Festival. In their second year, students will embark on at least two large projects (working on a thesis projects and/or with a well-known invited director). In their third year, each student will work on one large production and prepare their porfolios. Students will also attend many master classes on topics such as paperwork, contracts, system analysis, drawings, Autocad, vectorworks,etc. The UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance has six performance spaces, a fully professional shop staff, sound lab and a post-production studio, a season of twelve plays and dance concerts. The productions are fully supported with budgets realized by professional shop staff. The relationship between the student designers and the shop staff is similar to that found in very respectable regional theatres.
The program will integrate the use and the research in computing field for realizing new aesthetic visions in theatre. Students will learn advanced computing and audio production skills in this program; however, the focus of their training will be towards their growth as artists. We are looking for artists proficient in sound design and/or electronic music composition interested in working in collaborative settings. Sound design students will also work closely as composers and sound designers with the students of our newly formed MFA in Dance Theatre program.
