Humana Weekend, Part 1
I spent the weekend at the Humana Festival in Louisville, KY, which is presented by Actors Theatre of Louisville. This was my second year attending with a group of fellow theatre geeks. If it hadn't been for the SITI Company doing a show there this year, I may not have attended, as I was pretty dissapointed by last years festival. Anyway, I'll start off with the shows I saw on Friday.
Low - written and performed by Rha Goddess - I got there just in time to see Low. I dropped off Matt and Ian at the front door, and then tried to find a parking spot. I'm not a late theatre patron, but this was the first time the house has ever been held for me. Low has it's moments as a hiphop theatre show, and is hiphop enough for the greater theatre going audience, but probably not enough for other hiphop theatre artists. It had some of the same major flaws as hiphop music shows - too long, sounded like crap, and was incoherent. The sound design team was comprised of hiphop producers, who were assisted by one of the very competent staff members at ATL. The performer was miked with a head mounted lav, and the reinforcement sounded very good - about as good as I've heard in a thrust space, but only when Goddess was facing me. The siblince was a bit too much when she was facing away, but that's the rub when it comes to using wireless like this in a thrust space. The human voice is fairly directional, so when listening from behind someone, we lose all the high frequency information - but the microphone still gets the same signal. There were quite a few 'transient' sound effects, such as door slams, prison door slams, and some quick wooshes. But they all sounded like low-bitrate MP3s, which is particularly bad for transient sounds, and makes them sound all mushy, compressed, and noisy, as was the case here. Though they were all different, they all kinda sounded the same. The music numbers were just a little too fast, making her vocals completely incoherent in some sections. Slow it down people - just because you can rap fast doesn't mean you should. I know speed can be impressive in the hiphop world for battles and such, but in theatre, if we can't clearly understand what you're saying, then you're not saying anything at all. This show seemed to me to be a case of a great staff having to deal with inexperienced guest designers. I've been there, and I empathize with the staff. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the ATL staff took care of the reinforcement and SFX programming - kudos to them for making the reinforcement sound great in such a situation.
The Scene by Theresa Rebeack and Act a Lady by Jordan Harrison were up next. I was fairly indifferent towards both shows in general, but the sound designs, though fairly simple, were well implemented. I don't remember much outside some well chosen and composed transition music.
Low - written and performed by Rha Goddess - I got there just in time to see Low. I dropped off Matt and Ian at the front door, and then tried to find a parking spot. I'm not a late theatre patron, but this was the first time the house has ever been held for me. Low has it's moments as a hiphop theatre show, and is hiphop enough for the greater theatre going audience, but probably not enough for other hiphop theatre artists. It had some of the same major flaws as hiphop music shows - too long, sounded like crap, and was incoherent. The sound design team was comprised of hiphop producers, who were assisted by one of the very competent staff members at ATL. The performer was miked with a head mounted lav, and the reinforcement sounded very good - about as good as I've heard in a thrust space, but only when Goddess was facing me. The siblince was a bit too much when she was facing away, but that's the rub when it comes to using wireless like this in a thrust space. The human voice is fairly directional, so when listening from behind someone, we lose all the high frequency information - but the microphone still gets the same signal. There were quite a few 'transient' sound effects, such as door slams, prison door slams, and some quick wooshes. But they all sounded like low-bitrate MP3s, which is particularly bad for transient sounds, and makes them sound all mushy, compressed, and noisy, as was the case here. Though they were all different, they all kinda sounded the same. The music numbers were just a little too fast, making her vocals completely incoherent in some sections. Slow it down people - just because you can rap fast doesn't mean you should. I know speed can be impressive in the hiphop world for battles and such, but in theatre, if we can't clearly understand what you're saying, then you're not saying anything at all. This show seemed to me to be a case of a great staff having to deal with inexperienced guest designers. I've been there, and I empathize with the staff. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the ATL staff took care of the reinforcement and SFX programming - kudos to them for making the reinforcement sound great in such a situation.
The Scene by Theresa Rebeack and Act a Lady by Jordan Harrison were up next. I was fairly indifferent towards both shows in general, but the sound designs, though fairly simple, were well implemented. I don't remember much outside some well chosen and composed transition music.
posted by Dave at
6:53 AM
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