Mikaal Sulaiman is a Tony Award-nominated multidisciplinary artist whose work spans film, television, theatre, and sound design. As the founder of Moor Noor, a media production company, he blends technical innovation with avant-garde artistry to craft narratives that challenge conventions.
As a sound designer and composer, his credits include award-winning Broadway and Off-Broadway productions including Enemy of the People (with Jeremy Strong & Michael Imperioli), Doubt (with Liev Schreiber & Amy Ryan), Fat Ham (Pulitzer Prize for Drama), Macbeth (with Daniel Craig & Ruth Negga), Death of a Salesman (with Wendell Pierce & Sharon D Clarke), and Thoughts of a Colored Man, among many others.
He has also collaborated with some of the most prominent names and brands in the industry, and is the creator and host of Black Enso, a podcast that explores the creative process through intimate sonic essays and deep exploratory conversations with artists.
Here he discusses his Tony-nominated sound for the revival of Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman, which has nine Tony nominations including Best Sound of a Play and Best Lighting of a Play.
Production: Death Of A Salesman, directed by Joe Mantello, Winter Garden Theatre
Live Design: The quality of the sound, what did you want the audience to hear?
Mikaal Sulaiman: First and foremost, intimacy. The Winter Garden is a relatively big house for a play this dense and complex, so I focused on making sure every voice felt close and transparent for the audience. Like it was coming straight from the actor's body, not the immense sound system we had installed. This was especially challenging with all of the director's, Joe Mantello's, overlapping dialogue where there isn't a throwaway line to lose. Next, I wanted to weave subtle sound design textures into the space and into Caroline Shaw's score. Inspired by Chloe Lamford's set design with a car onstage at all times, I started to find auto repair sounds, socket wrenches, low rumbles, to support Willy's mind coming apart, so the whole design vision feels cohesive.
LD:Architecture of the rig, what did you use and where are you placing it?
MS: It's an all d&b audiotechnik system driven by a Yamaha Rivage PM7. The PA is V-Series arrays (V8/V12) over the proscenium with V-SUB and J-INFRA for low end, but the real work happens in a dense field of E6s distributed as overhead, surround, delay, and rear fills wrapping the orchestra and balcony, all run through a d&b DS100 so I can localize voices and effects to specific points in space. That's how we keep things intimate while still covering the room. Then there's a hidden layer built right into the set: small d&b speakers (e4s) inside the car for engine, hood, and cab, a Y-SUB under it, and E8s tucked into the columns, so sound emanates from objects onstage, not just from the air around them.
Nathan Lane in Death Of A Salesman
Photo by Emilio Madrid
(Nathan Lane in Death Of A Salesman)
LD:What rental shop did you choose, and what piece of gear was non-negotiable?
MS: We went with PRG, with Andrés Alzate (PRG lead rep) shepherding it. Two non-negotiables: the d&b DS100 Signal Engine with En-Scene (object-based localization) and the FabFilter FX Bundle, which is what I lean on for the aural effects and processing that blur my sound design into Caroline's score.
LD: Who was on your sound crew?
MS: DJ Potts (co-associate sound designer) and Will Pickens (co-associate sound designer), Alex Tobin (A1/head mixer), and Walter Trarbach (production audio).
LD:What makes the sound for this production so successful for you?
MS: The blurred edges. One touchstone was HBO's Chernobyl mini-series, where you can't tell where music ends and sound design begins. Joe was game for me to interweave my auto repair sound textures into Caroline's score so it all felt like a cohesive world of design. The clearest example is a football throw that happens in the show when the older Biff (Christopher Abbott) throws to the young Biff (Joaquin Consuelos), one of Joe's many ways of legitimizing having a younger and older Biff in the production. We spent days trying to get the music and the football throw and catch as well as the lights to land on the downbeat so the catch is perfect night after night. In that one moment on stage my sound design, Caroline Shaw's music, Sasha Milavic Davies' movement direction, and Jack Knowles' lights blooming the stage all hit at once. That seamless collaboration is what I'm proudest of.
