OnStage Blog: Theatre is a collaborative effort, and this means that you have to be aware of the tasks of those you work with. The sound team is just one of the many departments that are involved in staging a show. They do more than just play the sound cues, adjust the mixing of the system in the soundboard, and make your lavalier (or lapel) mics as inconspicuous as possible.
4 comments:
I’m very unfamiliar with sound, so I found this article incredibly helpful as to understanding the sound team’s responsibilities (and frustrations) around tech week and performances. This article is directed at actors, but it can be useful for anyone involved in a production to know what their collaborators require. I also found it interesting that this article was on onstage blog, a resource professionals in the industry read, as I would hope professionals are able to respect their sound technicians as a part of their job. I noticed that most of these guidelines boil down to communication: the sound team needs to know what’s going on. Changing blocking, lines, the way a song is sung, or the placement of a mic pack without telling the sound team will affect the quality of the show. Similarly, if the sound team makes changes to the equipment being used, the guidelines for said equipment, or the location of their station, they must tell the rest of the company for the good of the show. This message of open communication is valuable in all elements of theatre.
This article is directed towards actors, specifically, it appears as if this was written for college age actors as it mentions orientation. I would be shocked if any actor who had been in more than one show did not know the things mentioned in this article. I am not sure whether this article would be particularly useful to the demographic of the blog it is posted on. Onstage Blog states it is created for theater fans who are “involved in theater as a regular part of their lives”. I am honestly unsure whether this means theater professionals or not, but I do not think this would be useful to anyone involved more than casually. Making this required reading for first time actors in high school before tech could be useful, but I feel like this gets covered more succinctly in most rehearsal rooms before tech ever happens or on the first day of tech. As the article says, just be respectful and careful and you’ll be fine.
I know in my experience sound crews were left in the dust the most and were criticized the most because of how different that field was. Not only were they responsible for every non visual component of the show but they also had a lot of live work whose visible mistakes would usually be noticeable. Not only that but they had their fair share of problems with the equipment itself being funky with nothing that could be done with it. The ratio of work put in to praise given was the lowest there. So the article hit home, make everyone else’s job as easy as possible, common sense though. Another section, the one talking about how they need to mix for actors specific levels goes into the realm of the mistakes made because people might not understand what you need to do, those were not things I had thought of before the article. Be clear about what you need, the things on each concentration's mind won’t always translate to each other just by virtue of who has what experience.
I used to be a sound tech in high school and I wish this article had existed four years ago. Me and my department ran into these kinds of annoying things all the time and it would’ve been nice sending this around to people. The last part “Trust us – we know what we’re doing” especially! So often would people get mad because we needed to do troubleshooting or an actor disconnected their mic and we can’t magically reconnect it from the front of house. Or people would get upset that the pit orchestra was too loud, but there really wasn’t anything we could do to change that because of how the theatre itself was set up. Really just it would be nice if the director and the actors understood a little bit more about tech, or at the very least had a shred of respect for us and were able to communicate without being condescending.
Post a Comment