Richard III: The Roundup
I'm currently sitting in the final day of tech rehearsals for Richard III. I must say it 's really nice to work in a theater with Wi-Fi. It's a HUGE asset when you're asked to hurry up and wait, which is something us music/sound folks do a lot during tech. Like now...This gives me a chance to blog a bit about approaching Richard III from a sound/music perspective. This production is different than a "classic" mounting in many, many ways. No horses in this one. Tanks yes. Horses no. I've taken to calling this one Richard III: Beyond Thunderdome. It's a very contemporary, Burton-esque, Halloweeney setting for this play and thus, from a sound/music perspective, it becomes a challenge to keep melody AWAY from the palette.
At first, our director imagined more soundscape than score for this piece. Being as I'm new to this company/director, I decided to give the director what he wished with only minimal alteration. This is always the best strategy when starting a possible new long term collaboration with a director. Give them what they ask for, even though you imagine it could be much more, and then slowly build on it until it becomes their idea to trust your instincts and let you take it where you want it. It sounds very manipulative, and I suppose it is, but if you look at it another way, I am just trying to relate wholeheartedly to the antagonist in our production!
Anyhow, sitting here, watching this production for the 15th time or so, I think I'm finally starting to understand this play. By far, the hardest thing Shakespeare has done here is introduce SO many characters, all tangled in a web of relationships that are sometimes so confusing, that my sound engineer Amanda and I oftentimes stop our technical work for short asides when either of us realize how these relationships have worked to serve the dramatic function. Who is who's son, cousin, grandmother, aunt, wife or niece ESPECIALLY when we have a smaller cast and almost every actor is doubling roles can get very confusing, and I've seen this show 15 times. Our opening night audience has their work cut out for them.
The more I live with it though, and this is true for almost every show, the more I understand it and grow to love what the author has done. My last two shows, Streetcar and this, have both been road-tested classic shows of which I'm so happy to have a working knowledge.
I approached this soundscape/score in the same way I would if we were doing this production in the classic style. Characters have their own instruments... Here's a run down
The Young Princes (a music box)
Tyrell, the murderer (Celeste)
Margaret, the crazy but honest ex-queen (sitar)
Richard (waterphone)
Once I had these textures matched up, it became more a matter of either musically following or foreshadowing the scenes. We also have created our own musical term for this production called a punch of evil, or a POE. These come at opportune times throughout the show as accents or at times when a characters well laid plans take a detrimental blow.
GA Shakespeare does not have a whole lot of money for sound equipment and has not been able to upgrade it's system in many years, so for this production we rented a sub (a large speaker for LOW frequencies) which we placed directly upstage center, under the set, as well as four extra speakers, two for the localized onstage effects (upstage right/left) and two for fills on the proscenium.
Diagram:
This is also the first show I used QLab for. We had one huge hiccup with the program that almost brought the design to a screeching halt, but once we updated the software and kept numerous backups we ended up being alright, and tracing the problem to a corrupted plug-in.
I've worked professionally with three sound design programs at this point. SFX, QManager, and now QLab. Each of these programs is better and more managable than the last.
I'm now a firm believer in the magic and wonder of QLab. Maybe it's because it runs on a Mac, but more so because of it's drag and drop capabilities and it's ease of use. I'm hoping, at some point, to buy a mac mini and put together a dedicated Qlab system of my own that I can use in future productions.
One last thing that I'll detail here and then I'd better get back to finessing my cues.
I've found a few strategies have emerged in the creation of a sound design that have stayed pretty rock solid for me over the years, the first of which is the creation of a demo. Here's my demo for Richard III.
This demo is based on the ideas of our director for sound/style he'd like to achieve. I added to this my own take on rhythms and melodic instrumentation. Once he okayed this demo I was off to the races. There are so many layers in this piece that I can use for other parts of the show. Some transitions are very short, so only the oboe line will suffice. Likewise, the waterphone that I use throughout the demo ended up being used very heavily in the production.
What happens to the demo after it is composed and approved? It becomes our Curtain Call cue!
In this case, it also become our end of Act music as well.
Here's one last piece, just for kicks. It's the 2.5 minute piece I wrote for the coronation sequence at the beginning of act 4.
Thanks for listening.
-Haddon
Labels: richard_III, shakespeare, theater
posted by Haddon at 10:27 AM
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