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Gareth Fry | |
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| Born | United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Sound designer |
Gareth Fry is a sound designer based in the UK, mostly working in theatre, but also known for his work on radio, exhibitions and in XR. He is particularly known for his work with spatial and binaural sound. He has won multiple Tony and Olivier awards. [1]
Fry grew up between Wales and Exeter, the son of a teacher and a panel beater. "Theatre was not [his] thing" [2] when growing up, and he planned to study artificial intelligence. His path into theatre started at age 17 when he enrolled on an adult education class that taught MIDI & recording techniques for music production.
He "fell in love" with theatre when covering for a sound operator on a production of Amadeus at the Edinburgh Festival in 1992. He went on to study Theatre Design at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1996. He then spent 3 years working for AMS Acoustics, starting off doing data entry before moving into programming speech intelligibility modelling software. [3]
Fry started off designing sound for fringe theatre productions, a lot of which were at the Southwark Playhouse. [4] Simultaneously, he was also working as a sound operator in London's West End, mixing musicals such as Oh What A Lovely War! and touring internationally with companies like Complicite. [5] Over the course of about 6 years, his design work built up to the point where he became a full-time sound designer.
He has worked extensively in the subsidised theatre sector, with dozens of shows at venues like the National Theatre, [6] Royal Court and Young Vic Theatre. He has specialised in devised theatre, or theatre that uses a similar process. His work includes over 40 productions with the director Katie Mitchell, including pioneering the use of live Foley sound [7] and live cinema shows, for which he won his first Olivier Award for the sound design of Waves at the National Theatre in 2006. He has also worked on many of Simon McBurney's productions for Complicité, such as The Encounter, for which he also became known for his use of binaural sound on headphones. He has worked extensively with the director John Tiffany, starting in 2006 with the National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch [8] and on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , both of which he won Olivier Awards for.
He has also been involved in a lot of events and site-specific theatre, such as the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. He worked again with director Danny Boyle on Free Your Mind, an adaptation of The Matrix films, in 2024 at Aviva Studios in Manchester, subsequently televised on the BBC. [9]
Fry has designed radio plays for the BBC, including The Dark is Rising, Shifts, Omay, OK Computer and Jump. [10] He has also designed exhibitions such as the V&A's David Bowie Is, Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, and Diva [11] [12] exhibitions. [13]
Beginning with Complicité's The Encounter in 2015, Fry became more well known for his work in binaural sound and immersive audio. This touring theatre production featured a binaural head onstage, alongside actor Simon McBurney, plus a recorded binaural soundtrack. An audience of up to 850 people wore wired headphones to hear the show's soundtrack. Fry created the sound design with Pete Malkin, and spent time in the Amazon rainforest recording sounds for the show. [14] The sound design was highly praised by reviewers and received multiple awards. [15] He used a similar technique for a production of Macbeth in 2023, starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo, which was nominated for an Olivier Award, and received a WhatsOnStage award for best sound design in 2025.
Fry also used binaural sound on the podcast series, The Discovery Adventures, primarily recorded on location across the UK. [16] He also used it again for the BBC and Complicité radio drama, The Dark is Rising, [17] which was nominated for a Best Use of Sound award at the BBC Audio Drama awards.
He has also created work featuring Spatial Audio for VX, AR and XR formats, with his work showing at the Sundance, Tribeca, Venice and London Film Festivals. [18]
Fry was one of the founders of the Association of Sound Designers, now known as the ASDP, and served as chair of the board for six years. [19]
Fry is the author of Sound Design for the Stage , published in 2019 by Crowood Press. [20]
He has also authored many articles for the Association of Sound Designers magazine, The Echo. [21]
Fry was awarded an honorary fellowship to The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2016. [22]
He was named No. 92 in The Stage newspapers 100: Theatre's Power List of 2017. [23]
He won the 2007 Olivier Award [24] for his work on Waves at the National Theatre with Katie Mitchell. [25] He won the 2009 Olivier Award [26] for his work on the National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch directed by John Tiffany, and the 2008 Helpmann Award for its performances in Australia. He won the 2017 Olivier Award for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. [27]
He won an IRNE Award for Best Sound Design in 2013 for Wild Swans. [28]
He was awarded a Tony Award in 2017 for The Encounter, with Pete Malkin, [29] and in 2018 for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. [30] His win of two Tony Awards is notable because these are the only two shows he has ever designed on Broadway - most of his work in New York has been off-Broadway and ineligible for a Tony Award. His work on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was rewarded with a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Circle Critics Award in 2018.
Fry also received the Evening Standard Award for Best Design in 2016 for The Encounter, as well as a Drama Desk Award and a Helpmann Award in 2017. [1]
He won the 2025 WhatsOnStage award for Best Sound Design for Macbeth. [31] He was also nominated in the same category for Punchdrunk's Viola's Room.
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