The sound design for Clybourne Park was grounded in realism.  Most of the cues consisted of doorbells and phone rings, both land lines and cel phones.  Speakers were placed throughout the stage to localize each of the sounds, ensuring that the audience believed the sounds to come from the actual prop devices used on stage.  The selection of pre show and intermission music was a deliberate decision, made with the director, using only music by African-American artists in order to create irony.

This piece of music, by The Platters, began and ended the play.  The music was initially played through the theaters main house speaker system, but moved to a speaker onstage, below a prop radio, at the top of the show to sound as if it were coming from the radio.  This effect worked very well.  We used two versions of the song, one was the original recording, the other a version that was manipulated to sound as if it were coming from an older, lower quality speaker on a portable radio.  This is the manipulated version:

The intermission music served to transition the time period of the play.  Act I takes place in 1959 while Act II takes place in 2009.  After the first piece of music, you will hear the sound a a record spinning backwards, and then music popular in 2009, also by African-American artists.

Here is the selection of music that was used before the show, to set the time period and mood, and to comment of the action that is about to unfold.