Photo by Abby Wood.
Alexander Sovronsky is an actor, multi-instrumentalist, and the resident composer at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. His career highlights include composing for, and acting and playing music in, the 2007 Broadway production of "Cyrano de Bergerac" (starring Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner) and "Romeo & Juliet" (starring Oscar Isaac and Lauren Ambrose) at The Public Theater/Shakespeare In The Park. When he's not on stage, Alexander teaches workshops on the dramatic functions of music and sound in Shakespeare’s plays. He is currently on the faculty at Renaissance Arts & Wellness Center in Great Barrington, where he teaches theater and music classes to children, and he also teaches ukulele and guitar at Berkshire Music School in Pittsfield. I’ve been a company member and a resident composer at Shakespeare & Company for seven years, and it’s my second year as a guest artist in theater at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. My job as a composer and sound designer means that I’m responsible for any live or recorded sounds that appear in the production from the sound of thunder to writing a complete score, as well as teaching the songs to the cast. Most recently, I designed music for The How And The Why and The Mother of the Maid, as well as last season’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which I also performed. If you saw it, I was the guy in a dress at the end of the play.
I didn’t start out doing Shakespeare, but there’s always a need for random music moments in his plays, so I began to get hired a lot for that. I enjoy doing it and people seem to like it, but really anything I can do to make noise and entertain people makes me happy. My wife and I were living in New York City, but we got married in the Berkshires just over a year ago and then decided we wanted to move here full time to have more space. Now we live in Pittsfield, which is a great location for us because my wife, Jessica Sovronsky, who has been a stage manager at S&Co. for the past three summers, also is an adjunct theater professor at Simon’s Rock, as well as the props master/designer for Williams College. There’s a lot of revitalization going on here, especially along North Street, and I can’t believe how much improvement there’s been since I first visited here.
