As a composer/sound designer (for 'Let The Right One In' by Black Swan State Theatre Company at the Heath Ledger Theatre in Perth) I help create scenes for people that usually either make them feel far from every day life, or make them more aware of everyday life. It’s mostly through sound and music, and via theatre, performance or installation.
Why do you do it?
I guess I just started on this particularly path and just didn’t stop. While it’s by no means easy, I’ve been presented with different opportunities that have expanded and honed my craft. I’ll never stop trying to be better at what I do, but I’m having a fun time trying to figure it out. It’s a privilege to be able to play, create, learn and collaborate for a living. The anxiety I can mostly do without, but that’s the nature of the beast and I’ve got an amazing partner who cops the brunt of that and often knows how to calm my head and my heart when I need it most.
What do you love about the city you live in?
Perth is this little incubator of the weird and the mundane, which is I love. For a relatively small city I’m always finding new things and places and people in it. I also love that my friends and family are often in it with me.
Where did you go for your last holiday?
It was sort of a working holiday, but I was on a ship in the Arctic Circle, near the North Pole. Collecting sounds from ice bergs and glaciers and collaborating with amazing artists and scientists. I’ve been changed from the experience.
What's your favourite item of clothing? Why?
That’s a tough call between my steel Frye boots and my dressing gown. The former because they’re a legit cuban heel on a woman’s boot (not always easy to find) and take me through a variety of work and play situations, and the latter because it means I’ve either stopped work or I’m at the beach.
What was your favourite TV show when you were a kid?
'The Addams Family' and 'The Mysterious Cities Of Gold'.
If you could travel back in time for a day, where would you go?
Tough question. Maybe being at mission controls in Houston for the 1969 moon landing, or watching Louis Armstrong play for his wife in front of the Pyramids of Giza in 1961. I’d hide somewhere though, to not to interrupt their moment..
If we were coming over to your place, what would you cook for us?
Wine.
What's the best lesson you've ever learned?
Always check under the bed before you check out of a hotel. Oh, and my mantra during stressful creative times is “You’re not curing cancer, you’ve got no one on the operating table, do your best but don’t lose perspective”.
Tell us one thing about yourself that nobody else knows...
I’m constantly fearful under a thin veil of confidence. It’s not always a bad thing.
Are you happy with your work/life balance?
Hell, no. I seem to spend a great deal of time apologising for not having enough time for the people I love.
How do you define success?
Having a good work/life balance! That and being able to do what I love for a living without compromising both quality and my unusual but staunch moral compass.
What's your spirit animal?
I’ll get quite obsessed about different animals at different times. Right now I’m loving the komodo dragon.
