FORMER Novocastrian Benjamin Freeman has won the 2017 Sydney Theatre Award for the year’s best sound design of an independent theatre company production for his work on the Redline Production show 4.48 Psychosis.
Freeman’s award was one of 37 presented at the awards ceremony this week, with 18 shows sharing the awards. Another member of the show’s technical crew, Alexander Berlage, collected best lighting design of an independent production.
The big winner of the night was the still running but sold-out Sydney Theatre Company and Global Creatures’ production Muriel’s Wedding, which collected six awards including best mainstage musical, best direction of a musical (Simon Phillips), best choreography (Andrew Hallsworth), best musical direction (Isaac Hayward), best female actor in a supporting role in a musical (Madeleine Jones), best newcomer (Maggie McKenna) and best original score in a mainstage production (Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall).
Freeman won rave reviews for his work on 4.48 Psychosis, with one reviewer noted that “Benjamin Freeman’s quietly threatening and ominous composition provides a haunting musical backdrop”.
Freeman, who used Ben as his first name in Newcastle shows, showed his theatre skills at an early age, winning a CONDA in 2010 for best juvenile male performance for his performance in Tantrum’s Blackrock, with a nomination in that category also for DAPA’s The New Jungle Book. Freeman’s diverse skills were shown in the following year when he and Liam Bird were nominated for their sound design and compositions for Tantrum’s 2039. Freeman was also an actor in Young People’s Theatre and Stooged Theatre productions.
Freeman, who turned 24 this month, showed his versatility in 2017 through a variety of background sound styles, with the score he put together and played on a piano for a play having its premiere, Between the Streetlight and the Moon, praised by one reviewer for “lifting and punctuating the action”.
