Sound House is inspired by the haunted and often funny sound worlds of idiosyncratic 20th-century British composer Daphne Oram, inventor of Oramics, a precursor to the synthesizer. This multi-strand sound-generating machine serves as a structural model for an architectonic play in which disparate eras, worlds, and time signatures collide as Daphne's present-day alter ego, Constance Sneed, investigates the condition of invisibility that plagues her, too, and envisions a world in which old ladies do not die alone or forgotten.
The collaborators have developed the play not only as text but as a "multidimensional object" — precisely constructed yet constantly shifting — in which sound not only carves out story, but functions as an experiential road map to the distortions of time and space that are central to Oram's ideas. Their mission: create a true "sound house," an immersive sonic experience.