Designing the sound for Alice by Heart was about more than creating a simple soundscape. This show gave me the opportunity to build an emotional, immersive world that constantly shifts between the brutal reality of war and the fragile escape of imagination.
Set in a London tube station during the Blitz, the show begins in a very real place: the terrifying uncertainty of war. I started with the haunting sounds of that time, most notably, the air-raid sirens. These sirens weren’t just sound cues; they were daily life for millions of people. The warning signal, a rising and falling howl, was the sound of fear, of families rushing to underground shelters, of suspended breath. The all-clear siren, a single, steady tone, marked survival. Relief. A return to “normal,” whatever that meant. I use both in the design as sonic bookmarks, grounding the audience in history while allowing Alice to run away to the fantasy world of wonderland.
But even in fantasy, the real world leaks through.
Alice is a 15-year-old stuck in an impossible situation: bombs are falling, her best friend Alfred is dying beside her, and the world outside is literally crumbling. Her only way out? A book. Her own version of Wonderland. And just like Wonderland, the sound design becomes unpredictable, stretching, distorting, and reshaping as Alice’s grip on reality wavers.
Throughout the show, I used subwoofers, not just for volume, but for presence. Sometimes, the bombs aren't even audible—but the low frequencies vibrate through the space, creating a psychological unease. You feel the war, even in silence.
Time, too, became a major theme in the design. Alfred is our White Rabbit, and he’s running out of time, literally and figuratively. To reinforce this, I built in a ticking motif that follows him around the stage. When he smokes (a moment that mirrors emotional avoidance), the ticking slows… but it never stops. And when he dies? Silence. No ticking. Just loss. That’s one of the audible emotional anchors of the piece.
I also explored voice manipulation throughout Wonderland. The Caterpillars get a laid-back reverb treatment, like they've just stepped out of a fog. When Alice and Alfred "smoke," a slight echo stretches time. It's playful, sometimes surreal, but always rooted in her emotional reality. For the Jabberwocky, we layered on an octave pedal to make his voice sound more like a monster. 
One of my favorite moments is the Jabberwocky dance break. Here, the soundscape is chaotic and pounding—voice modulation, rhythmic sub hits, lock sounds, and layered bomb impacts punctuate the music, a reminder that even in the wildest corners of Wonderland, Alice can’t escape what’s happening above ground.
As we approach the final moments of the show, the sound design circles back to something simpler: the garden. Natural, calm, familiar. It’s the place in the story that Alice knows by heart—the part she clings to when everything else falls away.
In the end, my goal was to craft a sonic world that mirrors Alice’s emotional journey: overwhelming, magical, terrifying, and deeply human. It’s a design that asks the audience to feel as much as hear, to be unsettled, comforted, and ultimately moved. Because even in a fantasy, the echoes of reality are never far behind.

​