Benjamin Grant
Sound Designer


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About me





I am a Sound Designer, working primarily in Theatre, based in London. I have a background in electronic composition, and experience in designing for film, dance and installations. Collaboration is at the heart of my practice, and I enjoy working with directors and companies to devise and use sound in ways that engage audiences and enhance storytelling.

I am represented by Clare Vidal-Hall Management - for enquiries please contact info@clarevidalhall.com.



Download a PDF copy of my CV




Credits



2024 As Sound Designer:

Machinal | Old Vic | dir. Richard Jones
Figures In Extinction [2.0] | Nederlands Dans Theater | Crystal Pite & Simon McBurney



2023 As Sound Designer:

Death of England: Closing Time | National Theatre: Dorfman | dir. Clint Dyer
Felix’s Room | Berliner Ensemble & Komische Oper | dir. Adam Ganz & ScanLab Projects
Richard III | Liverpool Playhouse & Rose Kingston | dir. Adjoa Andoh
Wildfire Road | Sheffield Theatres Playhouse | dir. Laura Keefe



2022 As Sound Designer:

Redemption | The Big House | dir. Maggie Norris
Figures In Extinction [1.0] | Nederlands Dans Theater | Crystal Pite & Simon McBurney
Jekyll & Hyde
| National Theatre Schools Touring | dir. Kirsty Housely

2022 As Co-Composer and Co-Sound Designer:

Othello | National Theatre: Lyttleton | dir. Clint Dyer



2021 As Sound Designer:

A Fight Against… (Una Lucha Contra…) | Royal Court | dir. Sam Pritchard
Death Of England: Face To Face | Sky Arts / National Theatre | dir. Clint Dyer
Story Seekers as Composer & Sound Designer | Unicorn Theatre / National Theatre | dir. Justin Audibert
Everything Has Changed | New Diorama Theatre | Rhum & Clay / dir. Julian Spooner


2021 Other credits:

Sound Effects Designer | Get Up, Stand Up! | Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue | dir. Clint Dyer



2020 As Sound Designer:

Michael Kohlhaas | Schaubühne | dir. Simon McBurney & Annabel Arden
Death of England: Delroy | National Theatre: Olivier | dir. Clint Dyer
Where Do We Go Next? | Bunker Theatre | dir. Caitriona Shoobridge
Death of England | National Theatre: Dorfman | dir. Clint Dyer



2019 As Sound Designer:

Little Miss Burden | Bunker Theatre | dir. Debbie Hannan
Clybourne Park | Royal Central School of Speech & Drama | dir. Lindsay Posner
Maggot Moon (Composer & Sound Designer) | Unicorn Theatre | dir. Jesse Jones
I’ll Take You To Mrs Cole! | dir. Catherine Alexander / Complicité
The Last of The Pelican Daughters | The Wardrobe Ensemble / Complicité
Box Clever | Bunker Theatre | dir. Stef O’Driscoll
Killymuck | Bunker Theatre | dir. Caitriona Shoobridge
War Of The Worlds | Rhum & Clay

2019 Other credits:

Associate SD (w/ Tom Gibbons) | Pah-La | Royal Court | dir. Debbie Hannan



2018 As Sound Designer:

Treasure & Tat | Joel O'Donohughe Company
Southwestern | Tobacco Factory Bristol | The Wardrobe Ensemble
Isaac Came Home From the Mountain | Theatre 503 | dir. Carla Kingham
When the Rain Stops Falling | Royal Central School of Speech & Drama | dir. Eric Loren
So Many Reasons | Fuel Theatre
Of Mice and Men | Selladoor



2017 As Sound Designer:

Wind in The Willows | The Wardrobe Ensemble
Education Education Education | The Wardrobe Ensemble
The Road Awaits Us | Annie B Parson
Prurience | dir. Christopher Green & Holly Race Roughan
ENO Opera Works | dir. Martin Constantine
The Visitor | Trikhon Theatre

2017 Other credits:

Associate SD (w/ Gareth Fry) | Wings | Young Vic | dir. Natalie Abrahami
Associate SD (w/ Pete Malkin) | The Kid Stays In The Picture | Royal Court | Complicite



2016 As Sound Designer:

Seen And Not Heard | Complicite
Measure of Fidget | Joel O'Donohughe Company
10,000 Smarties | dir. Alice Malin
Digs | Theatre With Legs
In Tents and Purposes | Viscera Theatre
Best Served Cold | dir. Holly Race Roughan

2016 Other credits:

Sound Operator | The Encounter | Complicite
Associate SD (w/ Nick Powell) | The Tempest | dir. William Gallinsky
Associate SD (w/ Gareth Fry) | BOYdir. Sacha Wares



2015 As Sound Designer:

Unmasked | Acheulian Theatre
The Low Road | dir. Holly Race Roughan
Push (Composer & Sound Designer) | dir. Catherine Alexander & Grainne Byrne
Most Certainly Well Worth Knowing | dir. Jayne Port

2015 Other credits:

Associate SD (w/ Pete Malkin) | Beware of Pity | Complicite
Associate SD (w/ Dominic Kennedy) | Run | Edinburgh 2015 Tour | Engineer Theatre
Assistant SD (w/ Gareth Fry) | The Hudsucker Proxy | dir. Toby Sedgwick & Simon Dormandy



2014 As Sound Designer:

Lady Windermere's Fan | dir. Tim Hardy
A Dream From A Bombshell (Composer & Sound Designer) | dir. Anna Nguyen
Talking In Bed | dir. Rosemary Maltezos
Too Far Right (Composer & Sound Designer) | dir. Tyrone Purling
The Good Person of Setzuan | dir. Nancy Meckler



2013 As Sound Designer:

Hamlet | dir. Kelly Hunter
PACE for Accidental Festival | Camden Roundhouse | Meera Osborne
Metamorphosis (Composer & Sound Designer) | Merchant's Hall, Resuscitate Theatre | dir. Anna Marshall



Commercial:
2015 Composer | PUMA X BAPE AW15 Promo Adverts

Film:
2019 Composer & Sound Designer | Warmer | dir. Rosemary Maltezos

Radio:
2014-2016 Radio Presenter | Sonic Diversions | Roundhouse Radio
2013 Radio Producer | Traders | Roundhouse Radio | dir. Tara O'Malley

Education: The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London
BA Hons Theatre Practice: Theatre Sound (Grad. 2015)

Machinal


📝Sophie Treadwell
📍Old Vic, London
🗓March 2024.


Director: Richard Jones
Set Designer: Hyemi Shin
Costume Designer: Nicky Gillibrand
Lighting Designer: Adam Silverman
Movement Director: Sarah Fahie


Five time Olivier Award winning director Richard Jones brings Sophie Treadwell’s extraordinary epic masterpiece, based on the true story of the committal and execution of Ruth Snyder, to the intimate surrounding of the Ustinov Studio.

This provocative drama of the 1920s offers one of the greatest female roles in theatre – challenging, powerful, emotive and poignant – which has been portrayed by many renowned actresses of the British stage.

Machinal is based on a fascinating true story uncovered by Sophie Treadwell while working as a journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational case involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and been sent to the electric chair.




“The jarring soundscape of the play is central to its sense of alarm, and scenes here are overlain effectively with invasive sounds (designed by Benjamin Grant).”
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian

“The rhythm of Benjamin Grant’s tremendous soundscape is repetitive, disruptive and discordant, reflecting Young Woman’s unhappy state of mind and strong themes of capitalism, gender and social inequality raised in the play.”
Cheryl Markosky, BroadwayWorld

“Sound designer Benjamin Grant provides a soundscape of intrusive ambient noise that bleeds through cracked windows and thin walls. The grating racket of crying babies, arguing neighbours and a relentless pneumatic drill become instruments in a cacophonous score filled with jagged strings, dolorous brass drones and nerve-shredding squeals.”
Dave Fargnoli, The Stage

Death Of England: Trilogy


🔊Co-Sound Design with Pete Malkin.
📝Written by Roy Williams & Clint Dyer.
📍National Theatre (Dorfman, Olivier, Dorfman)
🗓February 2020 - September 2023.


Director: Clint Dyer
Set & Costume Designers: ULTZ & Sadeysa Greenway-Bailey
Lighting Designer: Jackie Shemesh

Photo: Helen Murray


A trilogy of shows between February 2020 - September 2023 at the National Theatre, performed across the Dorfman and Olivier stages. Death of England: Face to Face is the film accompaniment to the stage trilogy.



“... you have to hand it to the creative team — not least the hardworking sound designers Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant — for carrying a full-on assault of this sort straight across the finish line, to co-opt the language of sports deployed by the play.”
  Matt Wolf, New York Times (Death of England)


“Sound designers Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant make remarkable use of amplified ambient noise and snatches of melody throughout, filling the auditorium with scraps of electronic music and strains of elegiac piano. Cacophonic, jarringly overlapping renditions of Rule, Britannia! dissolve into the banging of a judge’s gavel, the screech of a cell door locking or the blip of an electronic tag, all raised to deafening volume. These brutalising barrages of sound serve to underscore the disproportionate force that a systemically racist state can bring to bear upon its citizens.”
Dave Fargnoli, The Stage (Death of England: Delroy)




Felix’s Room


📝Written by Adam Ganz.
📍Berliner Ensemble/Komische Oper Berlin
🗓June 2023.


Directed by: Adam Ganz & ScanLab Projects
Conductor: Christoph Breidler
Composer: Tonia Ko


This historical drama, which reconstructs the life stories of Felix Ganz and his wife Erna on the basis of archive sources, develops new digital narrative forms at the interface of theatre, music and technical innovation. With the help of projected holographic effects and stage sets from high-resolution 3D scans, the audience is transported into the life of Felix Ganz, who was taken to a so-called "Judenhaus" in 1942 and looks back on his past in letters and contemporary documents. The sophisticated hologram technology makes it possible to experience real places, journeys and memories on stage..“





Wildfire Road


📝 Eve Leigh.
📍Sheffield Theatres
🗓 March 2023.


Director: Laura Keef
Movement Director: Carl Woodward
Set & Costume Designer: Zöe Hurwitz
Lighting Designer: Amy Mae


“Specially adapted in a new version for schools touring, Jekyll & Hyde is a radical re-imagining by playwright Evan Placey of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale, directed by Kirsty Housley. In a mash up of Victorian England and the modern day, this story explores how the repression of female voices is as prevalent in the 19th century as it is today.

The story centres around two new protagonists—Hattie, Jekyll’s widow, and Flossie, a young blogger in the 21st century. As we see these new narratives unfold, the audience are confronted by the power the internet holds to the unleash our own inner Hydes.”



“Benjamin Grant’s omnipresent, ominous sound design helps wrap the audience in the nail-biting experience of a flight gone wrong”
Holly Williams, The Stage