How I wrote the music for Privacy

In 2014 I wrote the score for James Graham‘s play Privacy at the Donmar Warehouse. In July this year we mounted a new, much updated version of it at the Public Theater in New York, again directed by Josie Rourke and now starring Daniel Radcliffe. The play concerns rights issues surrounding privacy in the digital age, particularly in our usage of the internet. It is so up to date with current news stories and technological advancements that in both its incarnations, the script changed on an almost daily basis all the way through rehearsals. This necessitated my ‘score map’ (my working chart of music cues) to remain fluid right up to technical rehearsals and throughout previews.

The narrative score felt like something akin to pop-ups on an internet browser

The play is also incredibly eclectic in style and delivery – and the music had to reflect this. There are stand-alone moments that if looked at in isolation wouldn’t feel particularly connected to other parts of the score, but this is a show about something as varied as the internet, so the opportunities for diversity in musical style was huge. Music cues in the original production ranged from a sketch about how to take the perfect ‘selfie’ (which had an underscore similar to a reality television show or infomercial) to a pastiche of Nordic Noir television shows, to a meditative underscoring of a reading from Shakespeare‘s The Tempest. Although these moments might have felt musically completely unconnected, there was also a more linear score that was woven throughout the evening to help support the dramatic narrative. This narrative score helped to connect the disparate musical elements, allowing them to become metaphorical ‘stops’ along the ‘road map’ of the musical journey – something akin to pop-ups on an internet browser. At the end of the show there was a moment where dialogue from the world of the sketches and the narrative musical theme connected. This created a curious release. The final recapitulation of the linear theme set against what had been an earlier ‘fun moment’ of dialogue seemed to fuse the disparate elements, but set them in a new, more foreboding context. In a way, it was possible to complete the musical journey without resolving it.

It felt like one complete and glorious high-dive into the realm of cyberspace

I wanted all the music to sound somehow warm like a Pixar animation, but with a darker undercurrent and an element of the ‘computer-generated’ about it. This was, therefore, an ideal moment to use computer-generated instrument software. Even though many computer samples are now so good that they sound real, there was something that seemed contextually right about generating everything digitally even if an audience wouldn’t clock the difference.

Privacy is a production which was a dream to compose for as it used music throughout to help support so much of the story. When you get a chance to work on a play with this eclectic a mood-board to assimilate from, the opportunities to write exciting and varied cues are enormous. Being handed such a large playbox full of musical toys was tremendous amounts of fun, and collaborating very closely with the other members of the creative team in lighting, sound design, video and set design ensured the final product felt like one complete and glorious high-dive into the realm of cyberspace.

By Michael Bruce

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Privacy runs at the Public Theater in New York until August 14.