Sound Hire For Theatre
An ALternate approach
Written by the founder Steven Thompson
Often in theatre, we put headsets on the lead characters.
But that can be expensive to do in the context of youth and smaller amateur theatre set ups. (Especially in those plays where there are 15+ characters delivering dialogue…you know the ones!).
It also takes a lot of sound engineering / chaperone effort…fitting the headsets…changing the batteries…positioning the mic etc. (Which can be especially tricky on smaller children). And when the costumes or more complex or worse, with wigs and headgear knocking the mics.
(I’m not “dissing” headset mics by the way. I’ve toured as sound engineer in professional theatre…so I can testify to the relevance of a good headset mic which is well placed.
Just that in this article, I’m suggesting you could have a think about a different approach. Which for small stages, and in with some performances types, will save you money, and still make sure the words are heard…
Making The Stage Live
What if we could just make the stage “Live” and have actors heard without the faff of personally mic’ing them.
We can, in the right circumstances.
Here at Echo Performing Arts, in the Festival Hall Wilmslow, I hung 4 x DPA 4071 miniature mics hung above the stage with our steel wire system. They are a really tiny, but high quality omni directional microphone. In fact you’d be hard pushed to be able to see them in the photo above. But they’re there. And as a result, parents heard the children even at the back of the room!
I set an additional 4 x mics at the front. It all worked remarkably well, given the simpler task of not needing to fit 15 + wireless headset mics!
Another part of the secret source, is that there were six loudspeakers distributed around the sides of the room. That meant that we never had to turn the front speakers up too much, such that it would have done that feedback sound.
When it’s a 250-350 cap seated hall, this sound reinforcement may be all the supplement needed.
If you think I might be able to help get your youth or amateur theatre production sounding even better, then…
