Bio
Worry Noise Dirt Heat began in 2015 to share new musical theater—in 2020, expanded to include extra-theatrical, recorded music. In both media, WNDH work embraces the most powerful and accessible tools of creative expression to promote empathy for strangers, nature, others, the unknown.
Lane Dombois, Artistic Director
Lane (he/him) is a playwright, composer, and recording artist from around Arizona (unceded Yavapai Apache, Hohokam, and Tohono O'odham territory), currently in Brooklyn, Lenapehoking. In theatrical venues (and non-venues reimagined as theatrical), he makes musical plays in close collaboration with designers, directors, composers, and performers including Jesse Freedman, Ana Garcia, Nic Adams, and more. He plays, records, and writes music with the band Banquets/Blankets (with Charles Myers and Andrew Lane) and releases solitarily-devised music (Footsteps Follow, Madame Zero)—though collaboration inevitably enters into every process. Lane started Worry Noise Dirt Heat to share new theater and music (his own and others'), to provide an umbrella under which our community's music-centered theater and home-recorded music assemble.
Values
Empathy, Support, Access
WNDH believes art is empathy—understanding and witnessing another perspective, experiencing outside one's qualia is the goal.
WNDH supports artists by giving equal import to all project collaborators—with financial compensation for every project and attention to each collaborator's vision for the project. WNDH strives to make all collaborators in whatever medium feel comfortable and safe to contribute fully, to create a space that allows for vulnerability, easy communication, and thorough exploration.
And access: WNDH products (musical plays and recordings) are affordable and available. There is conscious avoidance of scarcity, elitism, or cost thresholds that need be overcome to experience WNDH work. It's made to be known.
Ambitions
Interconnectedness in the Climate Crisis
The climate crisis is pervasive. It affects everyone, though is currently and will increasingly distress with unequal exaggeration communities of color and communities burdened by resource lack—often a demographic crossover due to systemic racism.
With a primary goal of connecting and changing—of finding collaborators and an audience that will question experiential expectations and grow through the push and pull of shared ideas—WNDH contributes to increased interconnectedness in the climate crisis.
With each album and play, achieving connection leads to understanding and action—to diversify perspectives and advocate for a more equitable society, in opposition to colonialism and capitalism.
