Into The Woods

In support of Raleigh Little Theatre's Teens on Stage program, Mindtracs facilitated a weekend of audio design and sound education workshops. The students who were part of the technical theater portion of the program were able to explore sound design using acoustic elements, pre-recorded tracks and samples, and synthesizers. As part of the program, they learned the basics of setting up a sound system and programming Q-Lab.

The Maltese Bodkin

Historic Interpretations presented a comedy mystery with a Shakespearen twist. the play was staged as a 1940's radio drama featuring of the tales of Birnam Wood, hard boiled detective. When his partner turns up murdered, Wood has to find the killer amid a cast of suspects that includes Richard III, Falstaff, Iago, Mercutio, Viola, and even a merchant from Venice! The real solution to the mystery seems to be in discovering the secret behind a mysterious dagger known as the Maltese Bodkin. 

The show presented a 1940's radio play complete with live sound effects, vintage microphones and headphones, and featured a 1930's GE cathedral radio for the opening and closing sequences.

The show opened with the radio, isolated on the set, playing recorded entertainment and news broadcasts from the 40's. As the recorded opening of  the Maltese Bodkin radio show began, the actors appeared on stage and the action crossfaded from pre-recorded to the live show.

Mirandy and Brother Wind

Mirandy and Brother Wind is part of RLT's "Connecting Theatre to 20th Century African-American Experiences"
This musical, by Michael J. Bobbitt and John L. Cornelius from the childrens book by Patricia McKissack, tells the story of Mirandy who is determined to catch Brother Wind so that he can help her win the cake walk. 

We used the multi-channel capabilities of Q-Lab along with the built in audio effects to build the sound design of Brother Wind swirling around the theatre. Music director, Tim Smith, pre-recorded the underscores and backing tracks which were loaded into Q-Lab. Because of Q-Lab's extensive ability to create multiple vamps and cue points within a single music cue, we were able to use pre-recorded musicand still allow the cast to react to the audience and develop their performance each night.

Animal Farm

Animal Farm was the performance portion of Raleigh Little Theatre's teens on stage program in the summer of 2013.
Teens on Stage is an intensive five-week theatre program for teenagers which culminates in a full-scale production and RLT's first show of each season. TOS students take morning conservatory classes which include movement, acting, voice and improvisation. The afternoons are spent in rehearsal.
A companion program is Teens Back Stage, where teens interested in the technical side of theatre learn about lights, sound, video, and stage constriction. The teens build and run the final production.
Mindtracs presented several workshops on sound and video design and sound and video engineering and assisted the students with their multimedia builds.
A major element in the show is a windmill, built by the animals, which the men then destroy. We built a windmill model and videotaped it in various stages of construction and destruction The videos were projected on sail shaped screens positioned around the theatre space.

Clips from the Teens Back Stage build of Animal Farm

Pinocchio

Mindtracs recently created the sound design for Pinocchio, presented by Raleigh Little Theatre. We worked with the director and musical director to come up with a sound design that made extensive use of live sound effects performed by an off stage crew and also vocalized by the performers.
Recorded cues were used for the scenes in the ocean and in the whale to help develop the underwater world. One character, "the voice of the deep" was pre prerecorded and effected to turn the original voice into the sound of the spirit of the ocean.
Overall, the use of live effects was a perfect reinforcement to the setting of this story set in a fairy-tale Italian landscape.