A deviation from mainstream theatre, Madea's Big Happy Family engages the crowd with spontaneous humour, and features musical interludes that find audiences singing along to well-known R&B and rock and roll hits.
For the arena shows that include the RBC Centre in Raleigh, NC and the Target Centre in Minneapolis, Thunder Audio is supplying 16 Meyer Sound Mica line array loudspeakers per side, in addition to side-hangs of 10 M'elodie line array loudspeakers each, four for front-fills, and six 700-HP subwoofers per side for bass power.
In more intimate venues like Oakland, Calif.'s Paramount Theatre, 12 Mica loudspeakers per side were used as the main system. RMS remote monitoring system delivers extensive status and system performance data directly to the operator from every loudspeaker. A Galileo loudspeaker management system provides signal processing, while a SIM 3 audio analyser is used for system optimisation.
A nine-year veteran on the Tyler Perry crew, FOH Engineer Mike Charbonneau is touring with a Meyer Sound system for the first time. Charbonneau reports that the system is powerful yet well controlled, allowing him to manage the frequent audience interactions, the nine-piece band and 13 actors on stage. "The Meyer system also has great separation between the left and right arrays, and has much higher fidelity than other systems I've used."
(Jim Evans)
