So it seems that, when you have to do with theatre, you develop this tendency to see, find or seek theatre – or theatrical potential at least – in everything you come across.

I know I function like this, at least in part*. Friends and family have learned to tell the relevant mad glimmer in my eyes. I zone out during dinner, or I enter a lovely courtyard, or I hear drums, or I see drapery falling just so, and…

“Yes, Clara – theatre,” someone will groan, and they’ll wait patiently while I stop to take notes or, less often, a snapshot.

Which is why I was amused to find this little video of the Shakespeare Theatre Company‘s sound designer Jeremy S. Bloom, explaining how he biked his way through northern Italy recording ambient sound. Not because he had a specific show in mind, but because this is what he does wherever he goes: he records things that might make good theatre – or help to.

It paid off later, when director Sylvanus Iskandar decided to set his all-male Taming of the Shrew in a kind of imagined Italy – because that’s what Shakespeare would have known. And lo! Jeremy just happen to have lots of recorded Italy they could work on, to build a modern counterpart to how an Elizabethan would imagine Italy…

And if your curiosity is piqued, here you can find more videos about the production in its various aspects. A most interesting peek backstage.

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* The other part being the writerly Is-This-A-Story-That-I-see-Before-Me? part.