How involving should theatre be?

Those who know me know that I was looking for skeleton model builders last week.

That’s builders of skeleton models and not model builders who are skeletons.

But why was I looking for such people?

And – I hear you cry – obviously for something theatre related, get to the specifics!

We are currently in the final part of a focus on an american choreographer based in Germany who has moved from his classic roots into exploring the fringes of contemporary dance.

And while the pieces being performed off-site include thousands of balloons, hundreds of pendulums and a little video  trickery, the onsite pieces were also a little different.

These included two video based works; one filming passers-by and employing a little morphing, the other testing senses of perpective.

The piece on the main stage was just that.

It was all on the main stage, or over it, including the audience.

With German precision, the audience was let in exactly at the time on the ticket and were escorted through a darkened auditorium to the stage where they were clustered into small groups and accompanied by one of our model builders.

The view of the stage was blocked by a angled screen with projected vague images from a ‘beamer’ in the auditorium – about the only element not on the stage.

Onstage were over a dozen tables with model skeletons assembled on them – only these models were contructed randomly from skeleton model parts, in no obviously recognisable shapes, held up by rods attached to the table tops. The audience were invited to add more parts to the weird and strange ‘models of grief’.

A script began to pan slowly across the screen as the audience set to with cardboard and split pins. Where shadows from the models fell across blank paper sheets laid out underneath, people were invited to sketch along those lines.

These paper sketches were then used by the trio of dancers who infiltrated onto the stage and began to dance expressions of grief. The sketches were vocalised and radio mics picked up the vocalisations and were amplified and went through all manner of funky sound changing effects.

Each performance lasted 52 minutes, leaving just 8 minutes to reset before the doors were opened once more for the next audience.

It’s not a piece that anyone could say they ‘enjoyed’ but it was fascinating to be a part of, being extremely involving – as much as for watching the reactions of people as they realised that this wasn’t a ’standard’ dance piece they had come to watch but something much more personal.

[shop talk]

For those interested in the technical side of things, 2k fresnals overhead provided a downlight washed in sections across the stage and two profiles per table lit the models.

These were controlled by subs from an onstage lighting board manually operated to follow the movements of the dancers, just about the only way to follow the actions and react to the requirements of the choreographer who was onstage for every performance, gauging the reactions of the participants.

Sound was next to lighting and had DPA lavaliers on Sennheiser radio transmitters which came into the M7CL controlling the sound and then went off into all sorts of MaxMSP madness. A G5 which dual screens, a Mac Powerbook and a midi keyboard were among the controlling sources and all three expansion slots on the M7CL were filled with ADAT and optical ins and outs to external pre-amps.

Max users may be able to make sense of what was going on – I’ve never used the program so I had little idea. It was a program for pitch shifting, ring modulating, delaying and generally effecting what the mics picked up during the perfromance, including breathes and taps.

Sound was played through Meyer UPA-1p hanging from overhead in a rough 5.0 set-up with a sixth acting as a reference speaker for the operator who was off to one side.

Two Meyer 650-P subs  in opposite corners provided the low end.

[/shop talk]

I also have no idea how it ended – the last four minutes for me were spent moving into the foyer to get ready to open the doors for the turn around. I did get see the faces of the audience after the event though and there was a whole gamut of utterly bemused to slightly shell-shocked and absolutely captivated.

It does seem as though the majority of all the audiences came expecting to watch a piece, and not be in the middle of one – certainly the one or two ladies in their fine frocks and high heels missed any pre-show blurb.

The piece definitely worked on it’s own terms – and necessarily so – I just wonder what impression of ‘theatre’ and ‘dance’ the audience left with …

It’s my walking speed and I’ll travel at it if I want to …

Let’s use our imaginations for a moment.

It’s a Tuesday morning.

You didn’t sleep particularly well last night – a bout of insomnia – so you’ve had maybe five hours sleep.

You’re due in work for night and your train to London Bridge arrived a few minutes late, was sardine packed, has crawled along the line and you’ve just got off at London Bridge to find there’s no access to the Northern Line. From London Bridge to your work is 35 mins brisk walk and work starts in 40.

So a quick girdle of the loins and you set off.

Somewhere around Bank, well into your stride, somebody stops you, accosts you with a smile and hands you a speeding ticket.

“Sorry mate, you were walking too fast. Try life in the slow lane!”

I’m not certain a jury in the land would convict me …

From April 24th for a couple of weeks, the Go Slow campaign hits London. Well, not so much hits, as ambles into, admiring the scenary.

I do actually tend to support the ideals of Go Slow – it’s about taking the time to think things through, to take note of the surroundings, to take a few moments for yourself and not feel like you have to get to point B ASAP.

But there are times when going fast is kinda necessary – getting to work on time, getting to a hospital if your wife has just gone into labour, getting to a train station to catch the train that takes you to the seaside to catch up with friends for a day.

And those are exactly the times when having someone stop you are the most frustrating.

The idea of a Slow Down London festival  is great – but the idea of having that idea imposed upon you does seem to defeat the whole purpose of such a concept.

Years of living in tourist towns have given me a faster than average walking speed and an appreciation for not dawdling in the middle of a throughfare, or not stopping on a corner to check a map, or actually getting my wallet out before reaching the front of the queue.

Having a chugger hand me a piece of paper (hear the trees cry out and the rubbish bins smile) that suggest that I should roll into work a few minutes late having inhaled a little more particulate matter almost makes me want to don the power walking gear.

Or sharpen the elbow pads at least …

What’s the Spanish for ‘this may get technical’ … No comprendo …

More silence from me in terms of blogging – but not more silence onstage as it was once again time for our annual flamenco festival …

Yet again I was not allowed to hide away (though I did try) but had to participate, though this year the preparation actually began a few months ago and the whole thing went that little bit smoother.

Let’s get the tech speak out of the way first:

[shop talk]

This is our biggie for the year in terms of sound hire.

While our Midas remains out front along with a little of our outboard, the vast majority is hired in, meaning we can order it to spec and use in-house for backup for the inevitable damages.

FOH control was all analogue again: alongside our Midas Legend were several models of dbx compression (166A, 160Xt and 1046); M3000, PCm70 and SPX990 effects; KT DN360 graphics; and KT DN410 parametrics. Playback was from our Sony CD-D12, supplemented for one company with the Minidisc equivalents (the first time we’ve seen Minidisc for a while here). Another couple of companies had an Avalon 747 tube amp.

Monitor control was digital – a PM5D-RH with only a couple more KT DN360 graphics for company. This was sat alongside Sennheiser Em3532 receivers picking up Sk5012 transmitters. A pair of Shure U2 receivers shared aerial distribution for a couple of handheld mics (Sm58 and SM87 heads). Monitors were all Max12 powered by lab.Gruppen amps while sidefills were two pairs a side of trusty C6’s (alas no lightweight E12 this time…)powered from P1200 amps.

Bss active splits received all the mic inputs and sent them to both desks. Mics were all fairly standard models – KM184; SM57, 58, 81, 87 and 98; C414’s and AR133 active DI on instruments and vocals for all the companies along with DPA 4065, 4066; MKE2, MKE-40 and ME-140; and the (slightly irregular for us) Sennheiser HS2 on the radio packs. Not forgetting of course the 25 PCC-160 under the floor …

A LS9-16 was also used as a sub-mixer for one percussionist on one night, as much for his Kaos pad as his selection of SM98’s

Of course, this all seems a bit easy so the final company brought a lot of their own monitor kit swopping the PM5D for a DM2000, adding 3063 radio packs and their own 3532 receivers, a bunch of Sennheiser IEM’s (I can’t for life of me remember the model numbers, outboard and MKH70 rifles.

And while we had two BTR-700 packs in, this company brought 8 of the radio comms in (we quietly retired the two we’d run in – which simultaneously deprived the lighting department of using their Pelican case as a footstool …)

The observant, and patient, reader will have noticed that I have yet to mention the PA system.

Indeed, that’s true.

it was again a line array system, it’ll be no real surprise to learn that it was a line array system but a few people may pay attention when they hear that we had the new T-series to play with.

I believe that we are only the second production to use them in the UK (after the Chicago tour) though I’m prepared to be corrected.

Eight T-10’s aside ground stacked with two T-subs and an additional B2 aside for some ‘ommph’ with another four T-10 flown to help out the second circle. All powered from D12 amps.

I’ll talk more about these in a minute …

Lighting wise, the rig was all conventionals and was a mix of PARs, fresnals and profiles covering all the usual requirements.

Staging was black box masking, and varied somewhat production to production but only in terms of where the musicians were. The flamenco floor was removed during the second week and replaced with a companies own version a little variation …

[/shop talk]

The festival, as always, had it’s ups and downs. Loading in the day before was fun as myself and wife number one found ourselves travelling into the murky depths of rural Kent to load our flamenco floor into a truck early one friday morning. On the good side of things, it meant that we were forced (FORCED I say) to have bacon butties and a fork lift was available. On the bad side, the truck wasn’t supplied with entirely the right amount of securing  and it arrived at the theatre a few hours later with the heavy floor having turned some of our rustic wood and rush chairs into kindling …

Really.

I had to sweep the remains out of the truck and the truck didn’t look too healthy either.

Then with the floor out on the pavement, the sound kit boxes started to arrive and we were left under the clouds waiting for the matinee show to finish so we could get everything inside without crushing staff, patrons or the 100+ children who were due to perform that night.

Most survived.

Then sound were called at ungodly o’clock on a Saturday morning to start setting everything up, including a very nice man who was there to make sure the T-series speakers behaved properly.

He also proved most useful when the requested KK-105 handheld was found to not be in the mic case and was in fact in pieces back at the warehouse. After a moment of panic, 87 heads were deemed to be acceptable replacements and we all started breathing again.

Dan, many thanks again.

His help, along with everyone else meant that we went from bare stage to show in around 12 hours (18 if you count the overnight lighting rig).

A different company and show for Sunday and Monday, then another for Tuesday then the first Wednesday was a tech day. Possibly a little late but by then we were on company four and I finally had a couple of days off that weekend, something of a luxury for a festival set-up.

Company five started on a monday which doesn’t bode well and indeed it was one of those days.

Selected highlights for me included waking up with a head cold and blocked sinus’s, getting into work to find we were missing legs for the musicians platforms and going to our other venue a half hour bus ride away while arranging to hire more SM98  mics as we were missing a couple. I was wondering what people were going to make of me catching a bus while carrying 40cm long scaff poles but was spared that as I found the only legs the right size were already in use for a platform for a tango band. I figured they might notice if I dismantled the platform and returned empty handed to the festival fit-up to find the crew cutting long lengths of scaff into short lengths and that we need more SM98, of which we had two in the theatre I had just come back from.

An hour later or so, I returned carrying said mics from theatre, having confirmed the hire of additional mics (and having had the bus driver miss the stop) in my travels.

Sinus’s still blocked and mics still missing, I carried on through the day to the high point of having one of the Max12 get dislodged from it’s perch and come crashing to the deck. Fortunately a stage box and those extra hired mics stopped the floor from getting damaged.

Ho-hum.

Surprisingly, everything had coped pretty well – a couple of pop rivets vanish, a little bit of insulation on one lead and a connector on another was the extent of the injuries.

The missing mics showed up and I was partly to blame – in repairing a couple of issues arising in the first week, I’d left those mics separate to everything else. It took four of us to locate them in the second most obvious place to put them.

That was Monday.

Actually the rest of the week was mostly fine, though the sinus blockage got worse during the week, nothing else did, until I was left with the final treat of myself and the truck driver loading all the sound kit back onto the collecting truck on the next monday by ourselves.

And I was left with the thank-you gift from the company of a metal book mark … words fail me

This bit may surprise some of you – I actually liked bits of this year’s festival.

I’ll give you a minute to  pick yourselves up and re-read that.

To be fair, that was mainly a pre-recorded track used by the last company which was nicely epic in scope and some very good guitar playing. The wailing and stomping, I liked not so much.

As always, I’m left with the impression that flamenco in general, and I include all the different forms that it seems to take these days, wants to turn everything up to 11. There is this urge that ‘louder is better’ and I’m not the only one who thinks, “actually, no, it isn’t”.

There are some great musicians who play at this festival – but all you are aware of is the sound level and not the level of playing. At the sort of levels that seem to be the norm, you may as well use a CD …

It’s a shame as, as proved with the flamenco section during a show earlier in the year (this post here), when the volume isn’t loud, you notice the playing so much more. Flamenco, at least what comes through London, does seem to be very focussed on the technology and does seem to be forgetting the art

Talking of technology, those who read the shop talk section will know that we had a pretty brand new speaker system in and are no doubt wanting to know what we thought. This next bit is going to be talking broadly about speakers – consider yourselves warned.

Firstly, we never had time to spend more than a few minutes actually just listening. And our first impressions actually weren’t all that good.

The T-series is lovely to work with. T-’are just 11kg and have all the fixings in the unit – none of this faff with different pins that plague v-DOSC array’s. And the rotatable horn without removing the front grille means these things can be used for different purposes very easily.

That being said, I’m not certain that the current flamenco sound is the right application for these. The first listen we properly got left us underwhelmed. The first time we listened to a stack of Q1’s we were very happy. The first time we listened to the T-10’s, it just seemed a little lacking in every respect.

Then we took off all the system EQ that had been applied for the flamenco and added a couple of bits on the D12s ([shoptalk] made sure CUT on all T-10’s, played with the CPL; [/shop talk])

That vastly improved the sound. It is a very nice system and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again. This is nothing against the settings that our man Dan plugged in on day one – it’s as much about the ‘flamenco sound’ as it is about not having quite enough time to check the nuances of a new system.

But it’s not quite as plug in and play as I would like and the sound doesn’t seem to have the same warmth as d&b speakers normally have. We tend to find that American based speaker systems (Meyer et al) tend to be a little more clinical than the European equivalents (d&b, …) and the T-series seemed to be more crisp than I would expect from d&b (some of those handclaps could take your head off with these!)

I think if I had to between say T-series and Q-series, I’d choose the Q-series. While the T-series are easier to work with physically, the Q-series seemed to be a little more appealing in sound quality. And last time we used them on flamenco, they were pretty much plug and play, involving less set-up time (for us, at least, YMMV)

I’d really like to hear an A/B test of the two (and the next one in London is, of course, on a day that I’ll be elsewhere in front of a computer monitor trying to grasp AutoCAD 2008).

Still carrying on the shop talk theme, there are hints that next year it’ll be digital desks at both ends, which could mean that the only analog bits will be the microphones and the speakers themselves.

I do like the idea of not having to carry heavy outboard racks to the front of house position and being able to sit anywhere in the auditorium and be able to tweak any setting … of course, I’d have to listen to flamenco to do so …

Still, we do still get issues with having two languages being spoken in the same department (the English guy does one thing to try to rectify a fault, just as the Spanish guy tries something else to rectify the same fault …)  and going all digital should help with this, as long as it’s all set-up correctly.