Sound Design and Composition
THEATRE
Secret to Good Tea
February 18 - March 8 2025
Grand Theatre
March 20-29, 2025
National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre
Title: Nightmare 1, Crow Dance 1 into Transition
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
Maggie has spent a lifetime building a wall between herself and her memories—as well as between herself and her inquisitive, journalist daughter. Now, with a healing gathering for residential school survivors approaching, Gwynn wants Maggie to stop evading her truth, and be part of the change. With a pot of steaming hot tea as the only thing between them, Maggie and Gwynn work to dismantle her wall, uncovering Maggie’s story in a journey of laughter, revelation, understanding, and the bond of a mother and daughter.
In Maggie's nightmares relive the experience of being taken against her will to residential school, a crow starts appearing to her. This is Maggie's first nightmare and meeting with the crow, ending with her waking up and the set transitioning to the next scene.
Playing Shylock
October 26 -December 8, 2024
Canadian Stage, Toronto
October 16 - December 7, 2025
Theatre for a New Audience, NYC Off Broadway
Presented by Starvox
Title: Overture
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
A production of The Merchant of Venice is cancelled mid-performance after public outcries about the play. The actor playing Shylock delivers a candid and passionate appeal about identity, public discourse, and the theatre.
This is the overture that starts the cancelled production of Merchant of Venice.
The Bidding War
November 12-December 19, 2024
Crow's Theatre
World Premiere
Title: Hungarian Rhapsody Remix
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
The city’s last affordable house is for sale. Heads roll and shrimp tails fly when a frantic, 12-hour bidding war erupts during what was supposed to be a routine open house. Agents turn on buyers, buyers turn on agents, and everything spirals into an uproarious dark comedy of desperation and anxiety.
Lights come down to begin Act 3, after Act 2 ended in a bloody incident.
The Fixing Girl
April 15 - May 2, 2024
Young People's Theatre
Title: Fix the Bird
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
The Fixing Girl tells the story of a young girl coming to terms with an event that is much bigger than her. Three generations of a family are portrayed by Zoé Doyle, Eponine Lee, and Canadian stage and screen veteran Eric Peterson (Corner Gas, Street Legal). Together, they tell a story about finding inner resilience in the face of life-altering change.
Grandad (Eric Peterson) recounts how his granddaughter fixed the crow that was injured in their backyard.
Mad Madge
April 9 - 21, 2024
Nightwood Theatre
Title: The Queen's Power
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
Meet Margaret Cavendish, 17th-century philosopher, poet, playwright – a scandalous Jill-of-all-Trades and mistress of none. In her unapologetic pursuit of fame, Madge ditches her dysfunctional family to join the court of an unruly Queen and leave her mark on history. Paying homage to Jane Austen and Tina Fey in the same breath, this laugh out loud contemporary-period mashup suggests that perhaps a woman’s hunger for unbridled attention is not so shallow, after all.
This was one of the transitions when Margaret was a lady-in-waiting for the Queen.
De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail
February 1 - 23, 2024
Soulpepper
Title: The Final Battle
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
“There is no prison in any world into which love cannot force an entrance.”
Writing from his prison cell, Oscar Wilde is cut off from the world that once adored him. As he writes De Profundis—a letter to the man he loved—memory, regret, and desire crowd the silence, turning confinement into confession.
Set to an incredible award-winning score, this is Wilde unmasked: lover, icon, exile—insisting that even in the darkest places, love can still reach us.
This is the final battle between Wilde and his lover Bosie.
The Walk-Up
December 1-9, 2023
Soulpepper
Title: Flurry (The Four Seasons)
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
The 2023 Soulpepper Academy year end showcase was a devised theatre piece about neighbours in a walk-up apartment building.
Spanning over the course of a year, these four of these pieces transitioned us through the four seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall). These "flurries" as they were called, would show a time lapse action of all the neighbours bustling about their day to day lives.
Between a Wok and A Hot Pot
January 31 - February 12, 2023
Cahoots Theatre
Title: Between a Wok and A Hot Pot Album
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
"Then, there's Olivia Wheeler's mockingly hilarious sound design with a mind of it's own" - Joshua Chong, The Toronto Star
Bubble tea. Kimchi. Hot pot.
It’s cool to be Asian right now.
While preparing a traditional hot pot onstage, Amanda reminisces for her audience about when it wasn’t so cool to be Asian, and delves into the complicated topic of cultural identity and appropriation through food and art. As pressure builds and the show comes crashing down around her, Amanda must come face to face with the question: What does it mean to be authentic, and does it even matter?
Olivia's sound design featured everything from K-Pop and Soy Sauce Jingles to Epic Film Scores.
Between a Wok and a Hot Pot was nominated for 6 Dora Awards in 2023, including Outstanding Sound design in the Independent Theatre Category.
Armadillos
June 3-24, 2023
Factory Theatre
Title: Armadillos Album
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
On a cross-country theatre tour of a new interpretation of the classic Greek myth of the Marriage of Thetis and Peleus, the onstage danger spills into the backstage world as four actors have to navigate the realities of tour life, challenges to patriarchy and the disruption of a new actress performing Thetis halfway through the tour. The chaos she brings forces each to confront how the stories we tell about love, sex, power, and consent shape our everyday lives and interactions.
Exercise Your Demons
November 26-27, 2022
Director's Workshop Presentation at Stratford Festival
Title: Prologue
Composed and Produced by Olivia Wheeler
"if we know so much, why don't we know so much?"
Exercise Your Demons was a devised movement piece created with Langham Director (2022) desireé leverenz. The piece recontextualized the text of William Shakespeare's Ghost Scenes.
Lights up.
Centre stage, a translucent plastic man lays breathing.
Slowly, 3 actors emerge from the body.
They explore how they see the world.
EVOKE
Title: EVOKE
Created by Olivia Wheeler
Composed by Olivia Wheeler
Vocals by Natasha Gosling
February 20-21, 2020
Jamie Cassel Undergraduate Research Award Performance Installation
EVOKE was a 10-minute looping performative, immersive installation that which set out to explore how performance design alone can tell a story, transform the atmosphere and environment, and have the equivalent emotional impact on the audience as a live performer. The piece used the five stages of grief to explore the emotional impact of performance design on the audience. The piece starts with the Before which leads into the Interruption - the cause of the grief - and is then followed by the five stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
Othello
Title: Willow
Composed by Olivia Wheeler
Performed by Davey Bastin-Decoste (guitar) and Madeleine El Baroudi (vocals)
Recording from Show Archive
November 7-23, 2019
Phoenix Theatre
Willow was performed in this production by a newly formed character called the Ghost of Barbary with live accompaniment on guitar. Desdemona reminisced about her past as the Ghost of Barbary sang her song "Willow" to the young babe Desdemona in her arms in the background of the scene. This recording came from one of the final performances in an attempt to show how the live music fit within the context of the scene.
Julius Caesar
Title: Lucius's Lullaby
Composed by Olivia Wheeler
Performed by Holly Handford (vocals and mandolin)
July 4-27, 2019
Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival
Lucius's Lullaby was written for Act 4 Scene 3 when Brutus requests his servant Lucius to play him a tune to help him fall asleep, and in the act of doing so Lucius falls asleep at his own instrument. As the actor playing Lucius played the mandolin, this piece was written to serve the purpose of the "sleepy tune."
Antigones
August 21 - September 1, 2019
Victoria Fringe Festival
Maenad's Theatre
Title: Nature Rebels
Created by Olivia Wheeler
Antigones was a movement interpretation of the classic story of Antigone, performed by four women who all take a turn telling Antigone's story. At this section of the performance, nature is rebelling against since Antigone has just sacrificed herself instead of living out her uncle's punishment for her dutiful crimes. Antigone is lying on the ground surrounded the stiff-backed Chorus, all still as the nature rebels through lights and sound.
7 Stories
Title: 7 Stories Flying Sequence
Flute part arranged from Ian Clarke's Hypnosis
Performed by Olivia Wheeler
Recorded and adapted by Olivia Wheeler for 7 Stories
March 14-23, 2019
Phoenix Theatre
The 7 Stories Flying Sequence takes place right before the end of play when the Man jumps off the seventh story of the building and flies across to another building and back. This piece is the amalgamation of the two sequences, the first section of flute playing is when the Man flies to the other building and the second section of the flute part is when he flies back to the building he just came from.
Kansha
November 2-3, 2018
Intrepid YOU Show
Title: Silkworm Movement Piece
Composed by Olivia Wheeler
Shakuhachi Performance by Olivia Wheeler
Kansha was a devised theatre piece created by Hannah Mariko Bell about cultural appreciation through the history of the kimono. This composition accompanied a movement piece about silkworms making the silk for the kimono. It is based off of traditional Japanese Shakuhachi music and improvised to follow the movement of the actors.
Tell the Hunter
February 28-March 2, 2018
BFA Project
Title: Pocketful of Sunshine
Instrumental Cover of Natasha Beddingfield's
song of the same name
Performed by Eva Hocking (mandolin) and Olivia Wheeler (guitar)
Recorded by Eva Hocking and
Olivia Wheeler
This cover of Natasha Beddingfield's Pocketful of Sunshine was created and recorded for one of the last units of Elizabeth Martin's piece Tell the Hunter. Unit Eighteen: Joy reflects on H's memories of the past before their trauma and their favourite song plays on the radio. This is one of the few moments of lightness and positivity in the performance, and one can picture the sun shining through the tree branches and the calmness and serenity H used to feel before their trauma.
OTHER PROJECTS
March 2022
Nightwood Theatre
Liberated Feminist Futures
Title: Liberarted Feminist Future
Sound Design by Olivia Wheeler
Directed by Amanda Lin
Poem by Whitney French
Featuring the voices of Cole Alvis, Amah Harris and Eponine Lee
What is your vision for a liberated feminist future?
Inspired by discussions at Nightwood's Feminist Unconference in response to the above question, and curated by Sedina Fiati, Nightwood’s Liberated Feminist Futures turns this question to you, our community. The community responses to this question offered inspiration to several artists, including a sound designed response to the poem by Whitney French.
May 2021
Intermission, Soulpepper Theatre Company, SSHRC-CRSH
Taking on the World
Title: Learning from the Birds
Audio Response Created by Olivia Wheeler
Taking on the World was creative and critical responses to select shows from Soulpepper’s Around the World in 80 Plays as a part of the Taking on the World mentorship program for emerging IBPOC artists and arts writers. Taking on the World is a partnership between Intermission, Soulpepper Theatre Company, Brock University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Windsor, with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Ongoing
Canadian Immunodeficiencies Patient Organization
Slice of PI
Title: Slice of PI
Hosted by Bryan Hemingway
Music Composed & Podcast Edited by Olivia Wheeler
Slice of PI is a podcast for and by patients living with primary immunodeficiencies (PI). This podcast explores the diverse experiences of people living with PI through the reflective investigation of the social and emotional well-being of people living with these diseases.
September 18, 2020
Bluejaye Productions
Knife Skills
Title: Knife Skills
Written and Directed by Lindsey Schneider
Sound Designed by Olivia Wheeler
Knife Skills is a new radio play produced in partnership with KBBI AM 890 in Homer, Alaska. The radio play tells the story of four kitchen workers at a rural deluxe wilderness lodge in Lake Clark National Park, Alaska. When a prestigious group of Belgian royals visits the lodge, owner John lets sous chef Margo take the reins in the kitchen–but when she accidentally discovers her executive chef’s biggest secret, she must choose between her ambition and her friendships before they both disintegrate. The radio play immerses the audience the kitchen and surrounding wilderness with real audio capture from Alaska
Day to Day
September 5, 2020
Personal Project
Title: Day to Day
Composed by Olivia Wheeler
Performed and Recorded by Olivia Wheeler
Day to Day is an original composition by Olivia. This is the first test of the piece.
October 2019
Sacred Centre Dance
Bellydance based on the Elements: Fire
Title: The Dragon Awakens
Composed by Olivia Wheeler
Cajon by Hilary Wheeler
Flute, Percussion and Sounds
by Olivia Wheeler
The Dragon Awakens was a piece commission by Luciana Fernandes for Sacred Centre Dance's Bellydance Based on the Elements: Fire. Using fire and her costume as an inspiration, we decided to do a piece about a dragon awakening from its slumber. I wrote this piece based off her direction, and my own improvisations on the Flute and percussion on parts of a stairwell.