Natalie Margaret Houle Announced as 2025 Rising Star Winner
February 3, 2025
USITT and LDI are excited to announce Natalie Margaret Houle as the winner of the 2025 Rising Star Award! The Rising Star Award is sponsored by LDI/Live Design and is given annually to a young professional at the beginning of their career. The award recognizes excellence and artistic achievement in scenic, lighting, sound, projection design, or a convergence of these design disciplines.
Natalie "Nat" Margaret Houle is a Los Angeles-based sound designer, audio engineer, and composer born and raised in New York with nearly 15 years of experience in audio that began at age 13. She recently graduated from the University of California, Irvine with an MFA in Sound Design.
Her time at UCI culminated in the creation of her thesis, nmhspatial.com, the world’s first resource of its kind: an approachable product-agnostic analysis of object-based audio modalities explored through the theatrical sound designer’s lens. Alongside her research, Nat trained extensively on d&b Soundscape, L-Acoustics L-ISA, and Meyer Sound Spacemap Go, diving deep into how these modalities can transform storytelling and how sound designers can effectively engage with them — and you should definitely ask her about that.
On the West Coast, she has worked either as a designer or associate designer with Arizona Theatre Company, PCPA — Pacific Conservatory Theatre, Western Stage, Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, The Acting Company, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Los Angeles, INTUITV ARTSHIP, and Rubicon Theatre Company. Over the summer, Nat will teach sound design skills to pre-college students at UCLA for the Design Innovation Summer Institute.
Nat is an active Member of TSDCA, USITT, ANBC (Audio Nerd Book Club), and Soundgirls. Aside from moving sound around, she enjoys exploring California, sharing tea ceremonies with others, transcendental meditation, and yoga practice.
Natalie Margaret Houle
"I am incredibly delighted to be the recipient of the 2025 Rising Star Award. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that this is the second recognition I’ve had the great privilege of being awarded through USITT, the first being the Pat MacKay Scholarship in 2020 in partnership with TSDCA and Live Design International (LDI). My journey as a sound designer, and particularly as a female sound designer, is inspired by the opportunities, exposure, and networking that both of these awards have provided me. As I reflect on the significance of these awards in addition to the people and experiences that USITT has brought into my life, I cannot begin to express my gratitude.
Symbolically, this year, Rising Star affirms what can happen when young women are invested in and given the room to make mistakes, grow, and find their way. My career-long goal is to encourage the next generation of theatrical sound designers in the ways that USITT has encouraged me.
I am deeply thankful to the three folks without whom I would not be receiving this award: Brad Berridge for his nomination as well as Lindsay Jones and Elisabeth Weidner for recommending me. I’d also like to thank two of the many professors who witnessed my struggles and successes in academia and encouraged me to keep going no matter what: Vincent Olivieri and Sun Hee Kil. Looking back at how they have shaped my work, passion, and hopes over the past year, I also want to thank Nick Malgieri and Jordan Tani for all of their time spent mentoring me in spatial audio concepts and applications. And of course, thank you my dad Chris, my first mentor in sound."
-Natalie Margaret Houle, 2025 Rising Star Award winner
Natalie will be celebrated and honored at USITT25 in Columbus on Thursday, March 6, at 9:30 a.m. during our Awards, Awards, Awards ceremony with the rest of our 2025 Award winners! Attend our awards event and after join the celebration with your fellow attendees as we make our way to USITT25's Stage Expo opening to drop the rope and be the first group of attendees on the floor!
