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Gareth Fry | |
|---|---|
| Born | United Kingdom |
| Years active | 2006–present |
Gareth Fry is a sound designer based in the United Kingdom. He has won several accolades including Tony and Olivier awards. [1]
Fry grew up between Wales and Exeter, the son of a teacher and a panel beater. He was not interested in theatre growing up, [2] and 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 got interested with theatre while 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 three 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 subsidized theatre sector, with dozens of shows at venues like the National Theatre, [6] Royal Court and Young Vic Theatre. He has specialized 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.
Gareth also worked on many of Simon McBurney's productions for Complicite, 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 Complicite'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 Complicite 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 charity Association of Sound Designers, and served as chair of the board from 2011 to 2018. [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]
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