Gareth Owen is a thirteen-time Tony & Olivier award-winning / nominated Broadway and West End sound designer, described as "one of the only behind-the-scenes creatives whose star wattage spells success for theatrical productions". He is quoted as saying, "Bad sound kills good theatre."
Early life
Gareth John Owen was born in Sheffield, England, a son of two teachers, both of whom specialised in special needs education. At the age of nine the family moved to the Cayman Islands where Owen attended Cayman Islands Middle School. Upon returning to the UK the family moved to St. Ives in Cornwall where Owen attended both Mounts Bay School and Penwith Sixth Form College before going to the University of Plymouth in Plymouth, to study for a bachelor's degree in underwater science. While at university he worked in nightclubs as a lighting and sound engineer, and as a boatman and beach lifeguard in St. Ives, before eventually dropping out in his final year to go on tour with a rock band.
Career
Owen, described as "Broadway's wizard of sound" began his career in live sound when the Penzance nightclub he was working at began presenting live bands which Owen was asked to mix. From here he secured work with Birmingham's SSE Audio Group which lead to an early career in rock & roll, working at festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading, Party in the Park, and T4 on the Beach; and mixing acts such as Def Leppard, The Stereophonics, B B King, Bon Jovi, Jules Holland, S Club 7, The Spice Girls and The Rolling Stones. In a 2024 Broadway Buzz interview he says "My very first job was hauling huge, heavy mains cables through knee-deep mud at festival fields and dragging delay speakers across two hundred meters of sludge and piss and old cigarette butts."
Owens theatre career began when he was invited to mix the musical The Blues Brothers which was running at what is now the Trafalgar Studios in Londons west end. About this time, Owen is quoted as saying "I didn't have a lot of money so I bought a tent and lived in the band's garden". From here he was offered a job as sound designer for the UK tour of Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz' musical Godspell, beginning a collaboration which would continue until the present day. Owen went on to design a number of shows in a freelance capacity, before joining London's Orbital Sound as a full-time sound designer. In late 2009, Owen left Orbital Sound and formed his own company, Gareth Owen Sound, which he describes as "smoke and mirrors" in the Spotify podcast Conversations with Sound Designers.
Since 2010, Owen has since worked with composers and musicians including Alan Menken, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Schwartz, Björn Ulvaeus, Glen Ballard, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Max Martin, David Bryan, George Stiles, Cyndi Lauper, Pete Townsend, Alan Silvestri, Alicia Keys, David Foster, SIA, Karey & Wayne Kirkpartick, TLC, Tom Kitt, Stephen Sondheim, Giles Martin, Helen Park, Tom Fletcher, Gary Barlow, Carley Rae-Jepson and Sir Elton John.
Owen has also created musicals based on the music of pop icons such as Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, and The Beatles; and is a collaborator with top directors including Robert De Niro, Christopher Ashley, Jerry Zaks, Des McAnuff, Luke Sheppard, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Jerry Mitchell, Whitney White, Laurence Connor, Christopher Wheeldon, Terry Johnson, Michael Grief, Emerald Fennell, Scott Schwartz, Michael Arden Jon Chu and Sir Trevor Nunn.
Discussing collaboration in musical theatre, Owen is quoted as saying, "I find that the key to making shows sound good is to collaborate with the people who know best what [the sound] is supposed to be. It would be not just arrogant, but shortsighted and stupid of me to not become best friends with Alicia Keys and Adam Blackstone because let's think: who knows what Alicia Keys music is supposed to sound like...? Alicia Keys."
Interviewed regarding stage foldback, Owen says "I'm a great believer that if the musicians, and cast for that matter, hear what they need to hear, they will perform better. And [sic] if they perform better, they will sound better... and then everyone will be like, 'Hey, the sound design is really good...' Discussing acoustic volume of shows in a 2024 LSI Magazine interview, entitled "Making Broadway Rock", Owen, captioned as "Broadway's King of Pop" says "[in the theatre], when people say they want things loud, they don't mean Bon Jovi in Wembley Stadium loud." He follows up on this in another article in FOH Magazine saying "In my experience when people talk about things being loud, they don’t necessarily mean it’s too loud. They mean that certain frequencies are aggressive and painful. In my experience, you can actually make things quite loud if you keep control of the sound, if it rises in volume in a relatively uniform, relatively linear manner. If all the frequencies rise together, it doesn’t become screechy or aggressive or punchy.”
Owen's creative ethos has been discussed at length in multiple interviews, however the most succinct summation of his design philosophy reads “The traditional music theatre sound for a long time was about pretending that sound didn’t exist. It was all about microphones hidden in the hair, the sound of the orchestra coming out of the orchestra pit and voices coming from the people onstage. A ‘good’ sound design was considered to be one you wouldn’t know was there. Today, people go to the movies, hear an orchestra swell around them and they feel it. They put in their AirPods and hear amazing sound, get in their car and hear 29 speakers, or spend $600 at Target on an amazing surround system for their front room—and yet we still go to a theatre and pretend like sound doesn’t exist! I realised, ‘No, the world’s moved on. I’m going to stop apologising for sound.’ I made a conscious decision to take it in a completely different direction, which is a cinematic sound design - so I don’t really do shows that sound like traditional Broadway shows; that’s not really my thing.” "My job is to reproduce the performance as accurately as possible across the entire audience,” says Owen. “I cannot imagine anything more frustrating as a musician, or singer, composer, lyricist, or orchestrator, than to not feel like your work is being delivered to its maximum potential.”
With regard to immersive audio, Owen says, "It’s not a new concept, but it is a new buzzword. We are theatre people, and we’ve been doing what I call immersive audio for decades: putting people in the middle of the sound; and finding ways of localising sound sources from the audience’s perspective. That is theatre sound design..." Broadway musical theatre
Owen has worked as sound designer on the following Broadway productions in New York City:
Paddington (original creative), Hirschfeld Theater (2027) Purple Rain (original creative), Majestic Theater (2027) Wanted (original creative), James Earl Jones Theater (2026) Boop! (original creative), Broadhurst Theater (2025) Elf, Marquis Theater (2024) Hell's Kitchen (original creative), Shubert Theater (2024) The Who's Tommy, Nederlander Theater (2024) Back to the Future, (original creative), Winter Garden Theater (2023) Bad Cinderella, (original creative), Imperial Theater (2023) & Juliet, (original creative), The Stephen Sondheim Theatre (2022) MJ the Musical, (original creative), Neil Simon Theater (2022) Diana, (original creative), Longacre Theater (2020) Summer (original creative), Lunt Fontaine Theater (2018) Come From Away (original creative), Schoenfeld Theater (2017) A Bronx Tale (original creative), Longacre Theater (2016) Spring Awakening, Brooks Atkinson Theater (2015) Let it Be (original creative), St. James Theater (2013) End of the Rainbow (original creative), Belasco Theater (2012) A Little Night Music, Walter Kerr Theater (2009)
West End musical theatre
Owen has worked as sound designer on the following West End musical productions in London: Paddington (original creative), Savoy Theatre (2025) Diamonds & Dust (original creative), Emerald Theatre (2025) Just for One Day (original creative), Shaftesbury Theatre (2025) The Devil Wears Prada, Dominion Theatre (2024) Starlight Express, Troubadour Wembley Park (2024) MJ the Musical (original creative), Prince Edward (2024) Elf, Dominion Theatre (2022 & 2023 & 2025) Back to the Future, (original creative), Adelphi Theatre (2021) Cinderella, (original creative), Gillian Lynne Theatre (2021) Prince of Egypt, (original creative), Dominion Theatre (2020) & Juliet, (original creative), Shaftesbury Theatre (2019) Mamma Mia! the Party, (original creative), O2 Arena (2019) Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Palladium (2019 & 2021) Strictly Ballroom, (original creative), Piccadilly Theatre (2017) Bat Out of Hell, (original creative), Coliseum Theatre (2017) Young Frankenstein, Garrick Theatre (2017) 42nd Street, Drury Lane Theatre (2017) Wind in the Willows, (original creative), Palladium Theatre (2016) Mrs Henderson Presents, (original creative), Noël Coward Theatre (2015) In the Heights, Kings Cross Theatre (2015) Memphis, Shaftesbury Theatre (2014) Forbidden Broadway, Vaudeville Theatre (2014) Hey, Old Friends, Drury Lane Theatre (2014) I Can't Sing, (original creative), Palladium Theatre (2014) Merrily We Roll Along, Comedy Theatre (2013) Midnight Tango, Phoenix Theatre (2013) Let it Be, (original creative), Prince of Wales Theatre (2012) Top Hat, (original creative), Aldwych Theatre (2011) Fame, Shaftesbury Theatre (2010) Sweet Charity, Haymarket Theatre (2009) Shout!, Arts Theatre (2009) A Little Night Music, Garrick Theatre (2008) La Cage Aux Follies, Playhouse Theatre (2008) Maria Friedman Re-Arranged (original creative), Trafalgar Studios (2008) Carousel, Savoy Theatre (2008) Fiddler on the Roof, Savoy Theatre (2007) Little Shop of Horrors, Duke of Yorks Theatre (2007) Footloose, Novello Theatre (2006) High Society, Shaftesbury Theatre (2005) The Big Life, (original creative), Apollo Theatre (2005) Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, (original creative), Victoria Palace (2004) Owen is also listed as the sound designer and original creative for the London Palladium Christmas Pantomime from its inception in 2016 through until 2021. His company, Gareth Owen Sound, remains credited as sound designer until 2024.
International and regional musical theatre
Owen has worked as sound designer on the following productions around the world:
Thelma & Louise (original creative), The Young Vic, London (2026) Crazy Sexy Cool (original creative), Arena Stage (2026) Working Girl (original creative), La Jolla Playhouse (2025) Mrs Doubtfire, Germany, UK Tour & Australia (2025 & 2026) Saturday Church (original creative), New York Theatre Workshop (2025) The Heart (original creative), La Jolla Playhouse, Laura Pels Theatre (2025 & 2026) Sing Street, Lyric Hammersmith (2025) Cirque du Soleil: Songblazers (original creative), US Tour (2024) Pretty Woman, Netherlands & Germany (2023 & 2025) Civilisation to Nation (original creative), Mumbai (2024) Bat Out of Hell (original creative), The Paris Theatre, Las Vegas (2022) Kinky Boots, Stage 42, New York (2022) What's New Pussycat? (original creative), Birmingham Rep Theatre, Birmingham (2021) Hello Dolly!, Netherlands (2020) Starlight Express Bochum, Germany (2018) Carmen La Cubana (original creative), Madrid (2018) Eugenius! (original creative), The Other Palace, London (2018) Jersey Boys, International Tour (2017) Clueless (original creative), Signature Theater, Off-Broadway (2018) Christmasaurus, Hammersmith Apollo, London (2017) The Secret Garden, The Lincoln Center, New York (2017) Miss Atomic Bomb (original creative), The Other Palace, London (2016) Schikaneder (original creative), Vienna (2016) The Little Prince (original creative), Abu Dhabi (2016) Bodyguard, Netherlands (2015) Beauty & The Beast, Netherlands (2015) Titanic, Toronto (2015)