"Converse"
Photo by haydnseek
Producing music and sound design for live theatre presents some of the most unique challenges you can face as a creative composer, especially if you are used to working in the linear medium of film or TV. There are some similarities, but also a number of important differences, which offer surprising opportunities and rewards.
Won’t Get Fooled Again
As a composer for media, you can get seduced into thinking your music is better than it actually is, if you compose while running picture. Just as music can lift a scene, in turn the film (acting, dialogue, and the cinematography) can very much lift the music, giving it importance and meaning that may not be inherent! This is one of the big lessons of working in theatre, where you are forced to work away from the scene – you can’t take it with you, and it’s going to change anyways! In order to work ‘away from picture’, you must absorb the scene and have a complete handle on it, both in terms of the emotion/mood/story/meaning/etc, and the exact timings for ‘hits’ and changes. Once you have those nailed down, you can focus on writing strong music. When you bring back your work and line it up, you can then make any necessary adjustments, but your mind will no longer be seduced or divided – you’ll be confident knowing that you focused on writing great music, and now can focus on making sure it works to picture.
Equal and Opposite Reactions
One of the first things that is apparent before you even begin working on any production is that things are always in a state of flux – as the show moves towards opening night, it becomes more and more polished, tight, and predictable; however, even during a run it can still change and evolve in subtle ways. The actors find new motivations, hook onto some energy of a particular night, and develop their characters and relationships as they grow through the show. In film, the composer will usually score a ‘locked’ picture (or something like it) – the scenes are static – a performance is frozen in time and will never change. On the stage, a scene will never be repeated exactly the same way. The actors respond and react, they find inspiration, they expand and contract. In film, when you put your music against a picture, you can have a powerful impact on the reading of that scene. In theatre, there is an additional layer – once you bring music into the ‘picture’, they respond and react to it, changing the impact even further and more deeply. One of the most rewarding aspects of working in theatre as a composer is that you become involved early, and are truly one of the team – a group that becomes very close as the show progresses. You create in response to them, and they in turn to you – it’s a very organic and multi-layered process. There is a great thrill in watching an actor ‘hit’ their mark, and use your music to leverage their performance, in turn making your music work in new, different, and often better ways.
Tick-tock tick-tock
One of the advantages of a locked picture, a static and unchanging scene, is that you can write cues with to-the-frame accuracy. Trying to ’spot’ a scene in a play is kind of like trying to hit a moving target – an amorphous mass that congeals as rehearsals progress. It starts loose and improvisational, and slowly becomes more polished and exact. When you begin the process, it’s nearly impossible and pretty much useless to try and time out scenes and ‘hit’ any points. As the rehearsal process progresses, you then can sit in the dark with a stop watch (bring a flashlight!) and scribble notes furiously. Create a cue sheet, much like the one you would use for a film, which includes Act and Scene, page number, line cues, length, and notes on the music itself. You will need to be very integrated in the team, and have an ongoing communication with the Director and the Stage Manager, and whoever is ‘running’ the show in terms of audio. As things develop and change, everyone needs to be on the same page – the chain of command is important here as well – you will not be approaching an actor with a request that they speed up their monologue because your cue is running out.
Designing Sound Environments
Another aspect to working in theatre is that you may also be the sound designer for the show, depending on the budget. This means you will need to have at your disposal the means to create sound environments and cues. This may range from extremely ‘natural’ (trying to create a sense of time/place/space) to very abstract. Sounds may come from a production library, or from field recordings you capture and manipulate yourself – everything from a doorbell ring to the sound of a dog barking in the distance, a crowded bar or a street scene, music playing on a radio or waves lapping on a shore.
Test Drive
Once you have assembled your cues and applied the necessary treatments, they will be tested and adjusted for the space itself during ‘tech week ‘ – when the show is run in the theatre space, with complimenting lights and sound (aka ‘wet cue-to-cue’). All technical adjustments are made here – crunch time! Whereas in film you ship off the final mix for dub and don’t have to worry about how it will sound in the theatre, it is your job to make sure everything sounds as it should in the space and on the system the space uses . From the very beginning, you should make yourself familiar with the sound system and how the sound will be run – samples triggered via midi? Run off of a laptop using a cuing program like Q-Lab? Via a two-deck CD player? These things become extremely important once you hand over the sound to the sound tech running the show – you want to make it reliable, fail-safe, easy, and effective. During cue-to-cue, you’ll be calling out changes – volume up/down by how many dB? Cross-fade longer/shorter? And so on…
This is just a very introductory overview on designing sound and music for theatre – there is a lot more to know and learn! If you are intereseted, a great resource is Sound and Music for the Theatre: The Art and Technique of Design, Second Edition by Deena Kaye and James LeBrecht. It covers every aspect in great detail, and is a good reference for someone familiar with audio and music looking to get into theatre.
What are some ways that you branch out and expand your artistic and technical horizons?