A Piece of My Heart
by Shirley Lauro
TheatreMSU
November 2024
Starkville, MS
Director: Sara Wade
Stage Manager: Samuel Somervell
Scenic Design: Jesse Wade
Lighting Design: Greg Thorn
Costume Design: Melanie Harris
Sound Design: Kat Trinque
Assistant Sound Design: Kensi Frasure
Design Concept
A Piece of My Heart by Shirley Lauro follows six women who served in the Vietnam War—nurses, a musician, and a Red Cross volunteer—as they navigate the chaos of combat. This sound design seeks to immerse the audience in the emotional and psychological landscape of those women, highlighting the trauma, tension, and lingering aftermath of their experiences. Rather than simply recreating the external world of war, the design prioritizes the internal impact of that world — sound becomes memory, stress, and trigger.
To represent the nurses’ constant proximity to life-or-death stakes, I use a recurring heartbeat motif that intensifies throughout the play. Beginning as a steady, grounding pulse, the heartbeat gradually accelerates at key moments, mirroring the rising panic, urgency, and emotional overload the women endure. This eventually transitions into a flatline tone, symbolizing both the literal medical world they inhabit and the emotional numbness that often follows trauma. This motif functions as markers of psychological strain, tying the audience directly to the characters’ memories and experiences.
The world of the Vietnam War is reinforced through carefully researched military sounds, including period-accurate recordings such as the Huey helicopter—one of the defining auditory motifs of conflict. These sounds do not simply set the scene; they act as visceral triggers, reappearing in the women’s recollections as involuntary echoes of their service. To further convey the disorientation and lingering scars of combat, tinnitus tones emerge after chaotic sequences or emotionally charged moments, simulating the sensory aftershock many veterans experience. By blending authentic wartime audio with internally driven psychological cues, the design aims to honor the women’s stories while conveying the weight of what they carried during and after the war.
Paperwork
Audio Samples
For the depiction of Tet, the sound design underscores Steele’s frustration and foresight as she tells the audience, “Well, Tet happened,” after her warnings were dismissed due to her gender. To give this moment the impact the director envisioned, Cue 265 uses fireworks—processed in Reaper to resemble distant gunfire—slowly fading in beneath her line. Immediately following her words, a massive bomb blast hits: a sound crafted by dropping a heavy textbook, layering multiple impacts, EQing, and adding reverb. As well as audio of an earthquake for a distant rumble after the blast. As Tet unfolds, the soundscape expands into layers of explosions, gunfire, alarms, and debris, immersing the audience in the intensity of the offensive.
The transition motif was created using a recording I captured of phách sticks — a traditional Vietnamese percussion instrument similar to claves — to root the sound in the cultural world of the play. I blended and processed this recording in Reaper with Creative Commons wind effects, shaping the two elements together to form a light, airy chime-like texture. The result is a natural and gentle transition sound that carries movement and memory, helping scenes flow while grounding the audience in the play’s Vietnamese setting.
The heartbeat motif was created from a simple recording of me striking a table to produce a deep, organic pulse, which I shaped and reinforced in Reaper to resemble a human heartbeat. The flatline and heart-monitor tone was crafted from the sound of an electric fan powering on, edited and processed to achieve the sharp, continuous high-pitched signal associated with medical monitors. This heartbeat–to–flatline progression underscores the women’s most stressful and emotionally charged moments, with each cue timed precisely to the rhythm and intensity of the scene.
Cue 185 recreates the moment a soldier — Sissy’s lover — steps on a landmine, a traumatic event witnessed firsthand by the nurse. The sound begins with a sharp, concussive explosion crafted in Reaper, designed to capture the sudden violence of the blast and the chaos that follows. Immediately after the impact, the audio collapses into an intense tinnitus tone, representing the nurse’s emotional shock, sensory overload, and sudden numbness. This high, piercing ring isolates her from the world around her, placing the audience inside her dissociative state.
