Paul Groothuis - Sound Designer

A freelance sound designer from Holland, Paul studied stage management at Central School, London. His first jobs were sound operator on The Ideal Gnome Expedition (1981 tour) and recording engineer for Jeff Wayne (1982-84). NT sound designs for over 140 productions (1984-2001) include: Her Naked Skin, Present Laughter, Rafta, Rafta, The Rose Tattoo, The Life of Galileo, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, The House of Bernarda Alba, Oh What a Lovely War, His Dark Materials, Buried Child, Stuff Happens, Cyrano, Edmond, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Coast of Utopia, The Wind in the Willows, Bent, The Shaughraun, Flight, All My Sons, The Night of the Iguana, Under Milk Wood, Summerfolk, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Cherry Orchard, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Lady in the Dark, Guys and Dolls, Candide, Carousel (also West End and Tokyo), South Pacific, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady (also tours) and Anything Goes (also West End).
West End: Oliver! (1994), Porgy and Bess, Endgame, As You Desire Me, Bent.
Recently: The Sea, The Country Wife, Marguerite (Haymarket), Gone with the Wind, Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker!, Highland Fling, Edward Scissorhands, The Car Man, Dorian Gray, and Mary Poppins (tour).
Upcoming: Marguerite (Tokyo), Waiting for Godot (Haymarket) and Light in the Piazza (Leicester Curve).
Paul is a visiting lecturer at the Hong Kong APA. Live! Magazine Award for Oklahoma! and Oh What a Lovely War.

"This show is a classic case of teamwork focused on providing the best possible way of telling the story. It’s very rewarding to be a part of the team that is creating such a full-on and powerful piece of theatre.
Making sure sound reaches the right parts of the auditorium at the right time is a mixture of knowing the basic laws of physics – how sound travels and at what speed – and using modern technology to capture and ‘hold’ that sound before then releasing it in different parts of the auditorium. We expect to hear a sound when we see someone open their mouth. Creating this impression – the technical term is psychoacoustics – is an essential part of my work. We have some 260 loudspeakers in the production and 3 mixing consoles – and 48 radio mikes."