Shure supports Central students’ productions
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Final year students at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama are required to perform what is usually a public musical to a live audience as part of their assessment. Due to COVID-19, their annual performance of Merrily We Roll Along had to be cancelled, leaving students with no end of year project and no opportunity to showcase their work to industry connections.
In this case however, Adam Lenson director and course leader, Paul Barker got creative. The school made the decision to put on a socially distant performance which would be recorded live and streamed via YouTube allowing agents and industry contacts to view the students work.
Adam Lenson explains, “We were facing the issue that amateur productions of most canonical musicals (including Merrily We Roll Along) can’t be filmed due to copyright and there was be no point going to the work of putting these productions together if no one could ever see them. So, I floated a mad idea. What if we did new UK musicals. Instead of one big show rehearsed in pieces what if we did four separate productions for each of the four groups of students.
“I suggested two productions of two new musicals. A five hander and a six hander. After going through lists of writers and musicals I landed upon two incredible new shows. The Limit by Freya Smith and Jack Williams is a rock musical about the forgotten maths genius Sophie Germain and Catch Me by Arnoud Breitbarth and Christian Czornyj is a beautiful meditation on grief and loss about a group processing the death of their friend.”
In order to keep the production costs the same as previous years, the two shows and four performances shared a common stage design and the same lighting rig. The logistics of having a socially distant performance meant a two-meter distance between performers at all times with no touch or sharing of any props.
It also meant sound designer Luke Swaffield had to specify enough audio equipment to ensure everyone’s safety. Luke explains: “Once you have figured out the logistics, it is possible to run a show that is COVID-secure. All of the actors were in bubbles and each of the shows were performed twice due to the number of students. To avoid cross contamination, everyone was allocated their own transmitter and had two microphones.
“The microphones were cleaned, sealed and stored in separate containers, labelled with names to ensure that no equipment was shared between shows.” Luke continues: “At Autograph we are big fans of Shure’s Axient Digital system and have used it on lots of other shows. The reliability and clean, digital sound is like nothing else on the market and we knew there was no other system for this job.”
All four shows were pre-recorded live on a multi-track mix so that the stems could be played back through the console to edit the mix. Student Raffaela Pancucci assisted Luke Swaffield and other students from Central’s theatre practice course mixed the shows live. Raffaela comments: “Our end of year production may have been different to previous years, but it certainly brought new experiences. This set up meant we were able to mix a show live for broadcast which is something none of us have had the opportunity to do before. It was a pleasure to work with the writers in the room and to have a recorded show which we can all reference to future employers.”
Jack Drury comments: “Shure’s link to our education partners has never been more important. Working alongside Autograph with these institutions has allowed us to give students the opportunity to deploy west-end level wireless systems to complex and demanding shows. It was extremely important for us that this would be able to continue under COVID-compliant guidelines and I must don my hat to Central and Autograph and recognise all the work they have done to allow these performances to take place in a COVID-safe environment.”
