Sound Break

Centered around actual voicemails left on Lead Artist Katie Gould’s phone while she was undergoing in vitro fertilization, We Are Trying to Reach You dives into the medical, financial, and emotional realities of one woman’s experience with infertility. Making the personal public, this piece casts its listener as a patient besieged by a litany of medical information, overwhelming advice, and conflicting emotions.  Though silence and stigma around infertility abound, the CDC reports that “12% of women aged 15 to 44 years in the United States have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term.” With bracing intimacy, Gould lifts the veil of secrecy, inviting listeners into deeply personal moments of heartbreak, rage, compassion, and hope. Made in Lightning Rod Special’s signature explosive style, listeners are invited into the buzzing chaos one woman faces as she strives to start a family.  

Lightning Rod Special presents SUPERHOST, a Halloween Audio Thriller Welcome! Adrian is your Superhost! Entire home · Check yourself in · 8 recent guests said the audio is sparkling clean In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on public gatherings, Lightning Rod Special dared its members to begin creating audio work from quarantine. SUPERHOST was our first experiment in devising for this new medium. SUPERHOST unfolds over a series of voicemails to Adrian, the owner of a beautiful Airbnb in rural Maine. Get away from your stressful and conventional lives. Extend your stay. You deserve to be alone. You deserve hospitality. You deserve luxury. You deserve self-care. Because, wherever you come from, you belong here.

Nosejob invites you to light a candle. Step into your fantasy. You love it so much. Right?  You do like your fantasy, don’t you? It is yours, isn’t it? Crossing medieval legend with American sexual politics, Nosejob tells the story of a 9th century abbey of nuns who cut off their noses to repel a pack of rapacious vikings, and a 21st century college where boys are “burying” their faces in girls’ cleavage as part of a schoolwide prank. At the center of this wicked satire is college student Devon Chase, a feminist in search of a fantasy life she can live with. Nosejob charts the contours of consent, power, and fantasy to ask what has changed about rape culture in the last 13 centuries?