see Live Sound Action – Cosmological Composition: training, process, and curriculum

Rooted in sculpture and percussion and developed through the sensibility of the actor, Live Sound Action is a multi-disciplinary form of composition, choreography, sound design, and the writing of original performance.

Live Sound Action emerged out of my work in a diverse range of disciplines including sculpture, percussion, Viewpoints, Body Dynamics, Body Mind Centering, Developmental Movement, Capoeira, Red Nose Clown, Grotowski, Linklater, Song, Improvisation, Red Square, Moment Work, and Zen Buddhism.

Based on a direct and in the moment meeting between performer and object, space, and time, Live Sound Action engages the performer in ordinary actions — dragging, washing, and rubbing — with ordinary objects– piles of stones, buckets, or a rusty chain. Images that are physical, aural, visual, and emotional arise and act as seeds of epic storytelling. Live Sound Action offers an individual or an ensemble a way to discover theatrical language, to unleash the poetry of objects, and to create character, text, and story.

With a focus on awareness and presence, Live Sound Action is a process of connecting to and expressing from a source of intuitive origin. In an attempt to penetrate the duality of Absolute and Relative, flash on an immediacy, locate ourselves in the context of Nature, and in some way point us towards our primal selves, Live Sound Action is a sort of Haiku of theater. The meeting of human labor (carry, drag, touch, drop, handle) with substance found by the side of the road (leaves, paper, buckets, sticks) could be seen as a contemporary theatrical form of Zen Art Practice.

In the process of discerning what Live Sound Action is we can look to forms of Improvisation as well as the forms of Ikebana, Tea Ceremony, Aikido, and Haiku. Also we can refer to essential readings such as Dogen’s work on the ‘teachings of the insentient’ and John Daido Loori’s work on Zen art.

Live Sound Action is an approach to training and creative process for individual and ensemble development. It is a performance practice that develops the ‘nuts and bolts world’ of a play, discovers theatrical forms when devising, and creates theatrical narrative to accompany text. Also, Live Sound Action work can stand on its own as pure composition and expression of sensory beauty.

Eliza Ladd Biography

Live Sound Action Collaborations