CAROUSEL - A Slice of History
I recently had the opportunity to work the "in" and the "out" of the
current national road tour of Carousel, or billed as the Royal National
Theatre production of a Columbia Artists Management, Inc, Center Theatre
Productions, Inc., and Theatre under the Stars in association with The
Troiaka Organization and Pace Theatrical Group by arrangement of Cameron
MacKintosh production of.  That should be enough to distinguish THIS
production from THAT production, if'fn you know what I mean, Vern.
Our local Sacramento Light Opera Association (one of the few local
artistic endeavors that is actually covering it's bills, the Sacramento
Symphony has just declared bankruptcy) has a series of musicals that it
is bringing in on their "Broadway Series" in addition to their summer
Music Circus tent shows in the summer locally. They seem to be doing
well, even if some argue that the lists of works they perform is a bit
"stale".
I'd never seen Carousel before, so this was a treat to me seeing a
musical with the look and feel of a 1945 production with the exception
of todays lighting and sound equipment.
I worked in the Sound department (mostly "gofer" and "findthis" for the
show's sound crew, two fine troupers (in the best meaning of the term).
During the run of the show, it's fairly easy, during the show "just
twiddling knobs" and keeping every piece of the equipment working right,
but doing the "ins" and the "outs" can be physically quite challanging
to all involved. So many people intent on getting their respective jobs
complete without interfering with some other trades work is difficult at
best, but all find cooperation and get the job done in an amazingly
short amount of time with few frayed nerves, afterall, "the show must go
on", and on it does, on time, and ready in all respects.
Community Center Theatre, a part of the Sacramento Convention Center,
owned by the city and folks of Sacramento, etc.,  seats around  2000
with main floors, Grand and 2nd Tier, perhaps the best acoustics around
locally and is used for most of the bigger theatrical shows, when in
town. It's well suited to orchestra, opera, ballet and regular
theatrical productions. Ain't Misbehaving starring the Pointer Sisters,
(a show reviewed in this monrh's Pro Sound News), was recently here.
Some other shows coming this seasaon are Cats, How To Succeed in
Business, and Phantom of the Opera (Yes, THATone which will require some
enhancements to this venue to do right).
A great musical from 1945, there are many great songs from Rodgers and
Hammerstein. A somewhat "heavy" show theatrically, with lots of sets,
scenery,  props usually expected from a Broadway musical, done the way
Broadway musicals are supposed to be done, with style, lavishness, and
complete professionalism all the way down to the to the last stage nail.
Although I've been backstage and helped on other shows, this was my
first IATSE call to work the setup and tear down of the sound system
(video, intercom, power distribution, etc.). This was an interesting
production from sound design and operations views. Steve Canyon Kennedy
did the original sound design for the show. The two working sound on
this tour were David M. Johnson (Mac to us) and Ted Bible. Ted also has
a Macintosh with a ProTools DAW in his studio and was using a Mac
laptop. We didn't get to discuss computers and DAWs much past that, or
to discuss various operating systems virtues, you know how it goes when
an Mac vs. clone discussion ensues.
Electroacoustic interface to a room is the key to sucess or failure of a
sound system The sound system design was unusual but worked very well.
Speaker comonents consisted of Tannoy, Apogee, Eastern Acoustic Works
(EAW). The unusual part was the use of the Tannoy. These are 15"
speakers with their whizzer cone removed mounted to a frame and
suspended from the array and side towers. No cabinets! Just a protective
cover for transporting. They used 8 in an overhead array, and another 8
were used in the two side towers along with EAW  for subs and Apogee for
low mids. They use the Tannoys for 500Hz to 4kHz mostly for voice. It
seemed to work quite well with the overhead line array of 8 speakers.
Small near field speakers also went across the front of the stage down
low. A false stage floor had a turntable in it, helped to hide these
speakers in front. The sound was a little strange dispersion wise (the
Tannoy were omni directional up to about 1000Hz where front and back
started to matter and decidedly directional from the front). It did have
a decidedly warmth to the system and lack of extreme highs that
characterize the best of tube radios that were common around that time
in homes where the TV goes these days.
Behind stage right was the amp racks(mostly Crown), the Sennhieser
wireless mic racks, power isolation transformers and distribution. The
front of house (FOH) used a large English CADAC console with about 48
ins with a 20 input sidecar attached to it. To run audio sound effects
cues, they had 2 of the new MiniDisk "cart" machines for cue playback.
MiniDisks are getting to be quite popular with the new multi-track
Minidisk recorders just announced to the Musical Instrument markets at
the latest NAMM show. Microphones consisted of laviliers for the
wireless packs (omnis from Sennheiser and others), Crown PZMs for stage
mikes, and a variety of mics largely by Sennheiser for the orchestra in
the pit.
Bonnie *:>
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call:HIP-Hearing Is Priceless, by the House Ear Institute(213)483-4431
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