 |
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
|
IMAGES
|
Williamstown Theatre Festival Blossoms with Meyer Sound
From its humble beginnings on the Williams College campus in 1956, the Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF) has gradually blossomed into the Northeast's premier summer theater event. For the 2000 season, extending from mid-June through late August, thousands of theatergoers descended on this picturesque town in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts to enjoy a repertory season featuring stellar names from Broadway and Hollywood. (Past Williamstown playbills have listed Richard Dreyfuss, Joel Grey, Marsha Mason, Elaine May, Mary Tyler Moore and Christopher Reeve, among other luminaries.) To complement the impressive quality of on-stage talent, the festival endeavors to continually upgrade its technical facilities for each successive season. This year, WTF productions benefited from an extensive upgrade of the sound facilities, with state-of-the-art self-powered loudspeaker systems used exclusively for the first time in all five festival venues. Kurt Kellenberger, who heads the WTF sound department was a driving force behind the step up to new self-powered technology. "We have used a mixture of conventional and self-powered speakers over the past few seasons," notes Kellenberger, who also served as sound designer for half of this year's shows, "but this season is the first where every speaker in the festival has amplifiers and processing built into the cabinet. It has really made our lives much easier. Everything is already matched, so you just plug it in, power it up and you're ready to go. Also, the directional patterns on the new speakers are much better many we've had in the past, so we have much more precise control over where the sound goes." In total, more than 40 Meyer Sound self-powered loudspeaker systems were brought in for the 2000 WTF season for use at the festival's five performance sites. All the Meyer speakers were supplied by One Dream Sound of New York. Subscription Stages Of the two venues hosting plays in the subscription series, the Main Stage house is by far the larger. The large room has all 520 seats on the main floor in front of the proscenium arch stage and orchestra pit. To cover the greater portion of this space, Kellenberger specified two of Meyer Sound's powerful CQ-1 cabinets, which he had originally intended to fly above the arch-until he got a better idea. "Even though the CQ-1s are pretty compact, I thought they were a little obtrusive above the proscenium," he admits. "So instead we tried putting them behind the 'Shakespeare doors' on either side of the stage, sitting on top of the USW-1P subwoofers. We put scrim in front of them, and it has worked out very well. They give smooth, even coverage throughout most of the room and they pull the image down right to the stage." To fill in the rear of the room, Kellenberger hung a pair of the smaller UPA-1Ps up near the ceiling and aimed toward the back. In the musicals, these four speakers carry the stereo music mix. About 25 feet back, three of the ultra-compact UPM-1P speakers are suspended pointing down for a center fill for the actor's voices, subtly filling in a peculiar void created by the room acoustics. Additional UPM-1P speakers are used for front fill and effects, with exact placements flexible depending on the needs of the current production. Mixing duties for the main stage productions are handled by a 24-input DDA CS-8 console with Left-Center-Right panning, plus a 6x8 matrix that gets a good workout feeding all the fill and effects speakers. Microphones available for Main Stage deployment include Shure and Sennheiser wireless lav systems, Crown PCC surface mount microphones, and a variety of Shure and Sennheiser dynamic and condenser models for the orchestra. Kellenberger's first sound design assignment for the season was Tonight at 8:30, a quasi-musical adaptation of several short plays by Noel Coward featuring Blythe Danner in a starring role. "It was a challenge," he admits. "Part of it was a straight play, but then the actors would transition from unreinforced or slightly reinforced speech to full reinforcement with accompaniment from a seven piece band. It was tricky making the transitions sound natural, but the quality of the system made it easier to find a happy medium that seemed to please everybody." The ten productions of the 2000 subscription series were split evenly between the Main Stage and the more intimate Nikos Stage, the latter named for long-time WTF artistic director Nikos Psacharopoulos. Dedicated to less well-known and often more experimental shows, the Nikos Stage seats just under 100 around a thrust stage. Primary sound requirements for this room are fulfilled by four compact UPM-1P speakers with low frequency augmentation from a single USW-1P subwoofer. Come to the Cabaret The late-night cabaret performances have become increasingly popular with each succeeding WTF season. The easygoing, informal performances (hosted this year by comic Louis Black) are held in the 200-capacity Goodrich Hall, a former church building that presents some acoustic difficulties for amplified music. In previous seasons the cabaret performances were amplified using the hall's permanent system, usually with disappointing results according to Kellenberger. This year he specified a Meyer self-powered system consisting of UPA-1P cabinets for the main speakers, augmented by UPA-1Ps for over- and under-balcony fills. "We have been able to get a lot more gain in the room this year," Kellenberger notes. "With the UPAs we could control where things were going, and minimize reflections off the side walls and ceiling. We were able to get much better speech clarity, and they just sound great on music. The cabaret space also offers a basic stage monitoring system, with a separate monitor feed coming off two auxiliary buses of the 16-channel DDA CS-8 console. Monitor speakers are additional UPM-1P units placed on steps in front of the stage to conserve space on the cramped stage. Because of their compact size (only 18 inches high and less than 7 inches wide) the UPM-1Ps are used extensively for monitoring for Main Stage musicals as well, and Kellenberger is effusive in his praise of this powerful yet diminutive speaker. "I've been know to rave on about the UPM," he confesses. "It's the best small multipurpose speaker I've ever heard, and it works equally well for delays, fills, monitors and surround effects. " More Systems, Outdoors and In As a way of giving back to residents of Williamstown, the WTF stages a Free Theater production in the middle of the season. Produced open-air on temporary staging at the Buxton School field, this free-to-all play (A Servant of Two Masters this season) runs six nights a week over a two week span. The festival seating space easily accommodates upwards of 300 with ample stretching room. For the 2000 staging, the main portions of the audience area were covered by a pair of Meyer Sound CQ-1s, with four UPM-1Ps on pole mounts set back around the perimeter on a delay ring to cover playgoers who might be sitting as far as 150 feet from the stage. Stage pickup was largely limited to Crown surface microphones. According to Kellenberger, the first performance was very well received, and was unmarred by technical glitches despite heavy rains in days previous which put a strain on set-up time. "We had nothing but compliments," says Kellenberger. "Everybody could hear clearly around the field and we had no problems with feedback at all." Kellenberger and his crew also supplied sound systems for the WTF's community outreach program, the Greylock Theater Project. Established to involve disadvantaged youth from nearby North Adams in all aspects of theater, The Greylock Theater Project stages performances of plays written and performed by the youth, in some cases teamed "one on one" with members of the WTF acting company. Greylock performances are held at MassMOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). a converted factory building with unadorned "live" factory acoustics. To manage sound in this space, Kellenberger brought in a flexible assortment of UPA-1P and UPM-1P loudspeaker systems to supplement the in-house sound facilities. "Self powered systems are a great help in getting a consistent sound across different venues. And that makes it easier for sound designers to focus on the quality of music and effects when recording them in the studio, as opposed to trying to iron out technical problems." Step Into the Future As Williamstown's first season of self-powered sound wound down into the final weeks, all indications pointed to a full return of the technology in the seasons to come. Aside from improved sound clarity and faster set-up, the sound designers were pleased by the way cabinets of various sizes could be combined to produce a uniform, consistent sound. "I like the way you can throw CQs and UPAs and UPMs together in the same room and they work together well," remarks Kellenberger. "It's not like previous seasons when we would have to EQ cabinets drastically to try to make them sound similar. With the Meyer self-powered systems, you only have to deal with the acoustics of the room. You don't have to compensate for inadequacies of the loudspeaker." According to One Dream Sound's Tim Coyle, this uniformity of response also is a big advantage at the "front end" of sound design. "Self powered systems are a great help in getting a consistent sound across different venues. And that makes it easier for sound designers to focus on the quality of music and effects when recording them in the studio, as opposed to trying to iron out technical problems." Kurt Kellenberger notes that the self-powered concept has smoothed the way into more extensive use of surround sound effects, since adding extra sound sources or locations is simply a matter of plugging in another self-powered speaker. "You don't have to deal with more amps or processors and where to put them. With self-powered speakers, the only limit is the number of auxiliary or matrix outputs you can use for sound sources." With all the inherent advantages of self-powered loudspeakers, Kellenberger has hard pressed to come up with any down side to the technology. Everything pretty much fell into place according to plan. He only encountered one unanticipated circumstance, and that occurred during setup of the systems. "We use interns to help hook equipment and fly the speakers, and in past years we allowed at least a couple days for them to get all the amps and processors wired up and checked and all the speakers flown. Well, this year at the main stage, we had it all done the first day, which left me scratching around to find something else for them to do for the following day." October, 2000 |
FEATURED PRODUCTS Scenes from "Light Up The Sky" by Moss Hart with Eric Stoltz at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. |
|
|
Contact
Us | Terms of Use | Trademarks |
