VIEW PROJECT
Broadway / Shubert Theatre
POTUS
Sound design for a Broadway farce built on speed and precision.
Opened April 27, 2022
— POTUS required a design language fast enough for farce and precise enough for every door, turn, entrance, and escalation.
METHOD
Sound Design
Comic Timing
Create a clear, agile sound world that supports comic timing and escalating stakes.
Written by Selina Fillinger and directed by Susan Stroman, POTUS turns the machinery of power into a high-speed ensemble farce. The sound design supports that pressure: transitions, room logic, comic impact, and scenes that change direction instantly.
The design gives the production propulsion without over-explaining the joke. It supports a world where every cue, entrance, and shift in space has to land cleanly.
Pre-Production
Production systems, backstage rhythm, and performance support
The work depends on timing, restraint, and a precise sense of when sound should lead, follow, vanish, or sharpen the next turn.
Listening with intention here means listening for tempo: how a scene accelerates, when a transition needs propulsion, and when silence sharpens the next event.
Timing and Systems
The process centered on responsiveness to staging, rotation, rhythm, and the production’s shifting physical comedy. Sound had to move like part of the farce engine.
Every cue had to earn its place in the pressure cooker of the show.
Stamina and imagination keep the design quick, reliable, and alive inside a high-speed ensemble.
Pace, Pressure, Presence
The design supports propulsion, timing, theatrical clarity, and a room that can change emotional temperature in an instant.
POTUS shows the production side of sound design: making complex timing feel effortless so the audience can ride the momentum.
Project Images
A fast room still needs nuance: the sound must move quickly without flattening the people inside the story.
Recognition
A Broadway sound design for Selina Fillinger's POTUS, directed by Susan Stroman, supporting pace, pressure, timing, and ensemble precision at the Shubert Theatre.
POTUS — Broadway / Shubert Theatre / Sound Design
POTUS expands Jessica’s Broadway sound design work into a different mode: speed, comedy, ensemble precision, and production pressure.
A high-velocity Broadway comedy where sound supports pace, pressure, timing, and presence without crowding the ensemble’s rhythm.
