Originally produced and performed in London's West End in 1991, The Hunting of the Snark is Mike Batt's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's 'nonsense' poem about a voyage in search of a mythical creature. Batt, who flew down to watch the first night at the Minack, had declined all previous requests to stage the production until Croydon-based amateur performers, The Mitre Players, approached him in 2004.
"Apart from Batt's original elaborate production, there was no formula to follow, just a script, a score, a few production stills, and a poor quality audio 'bootleg'," comments the Mitre Players' drummer, Richard Wear. "The original show featured a full, on-stage 50-piece orchestra and a unique design approach using a system of animated projection of multi_layered hand-made cells using 156 separate projectors beaming on to a vast array of flats and surfaces."
Sound and lighting was a particular challenge at the theatre, which is perched on the cliffs and exposed to the elements, so every piece of equipment has to be hand carried down the steep amphi-theatre, and able to withstand all weathers. The FOH mix and lighting are controlled from a small stone 'hut' halfway up the gulley of seats. Below is a VIP box, which regular Minack sound man, James McLeod, prefers to use for obvious viewing and listening reasons.
McLeod explained: "The house system is based around a 24-channel Allen & Heath GL2200 dual-function live sound mixer, with inputs from float mics, MD/CD players, and 8 Sennheiser evolution radio mics. There is a dedicated power amp for on-stage Bose 802s, and a separate rack of five dual channel amps to drive the Bose 402 and 101 speakers distributed throughout the auditorium. For FOH delays, a Yamaha digital delay unit gives three levels of delay."
For the Snark production, this was augmented by two additional mixers to accommodate 16 radio mics for the cast (Trantec S4.5 and S4000 UHF models), five Crown PCC front of stage float mics, and the band. An Allen & Heath PA20 compact stereo live mixer was used in the pit to provide two sub-mixes - four DPA 4060 string mics and the AKG C418/D 1 12 drum kit mics. These went back to the VIP box down a 50m multicore, along with feeds from four ambient AKG C 1 OOOS mics suspended above the wind/reeds with DI's for guitar, bass and keys. The VIP box contained the other two mixers, three radio mic receiver racks, a Sony MID player, and an Alesis MicroVerb FX Unit. A 16_channel Allen & Heath GL2000 was used to provide two separate sub_mixes, for the float mics and the band.
Wear continues: "I drove the band sub_mix on the PA20, which proved pretty straightforward even for my limited sound engineering skills. A bit of parametic EQ for strings and kit sounds, together with a light use of built-in digital reverb for strings - a quartet playing a score originally written for orchestral sections - seemed to do the trick."
About 20 lights were added to the house lighting rig - mostly floor lights (Minim PCs) and profiles (Strand SLs) used for gobo projection - and for extra flexibility, two Foxie MSR follow spots and four ChromaQ colour changers.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
