Recently for a Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) show that I was sound designing, it seemed that there was scope to make a practical radio.
Practicals are some of the best fun in theatre, without the audience knowing that there are little bits of trickery happening.
The show, Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, appeared in RADA’s GBS Theatre, in-the-round, and was directed by Michael Fentiman and designed by James Turner.
Introducing Act 2, we’ve moved on 50 years to the year 2009, in the same house. A group of people from the neighborhood are discussing what should become of the house and who exactly should move into it (which echoes Act 1).
More arguments ensue and the play ends on a flashback to 1959, with a conversation between the deceased son and his mother. It’s a politically charged play full of dark humor and uncomfortable truths.
The story is told in two halves. Act 1 is set in 1959 in a suburban Chicago house, where we’re introduced to a married couple. As the act goes on, we learn that their son died and that the parents are moving to escape neighborhood gossip; what follows is a heated discussion as to who should be allowed to move into the house after they’ve gone.
One of the props on stage is the 1950s-era replica, purchased in Deptford Market for a “tenner.” It’s the best practical I’ve ever made (and I must confess that it functioned as a real radio before I destroyed the inside of it).
I’d decided to go ahead and make the practical myself, by way of a challenge in between attending rehearsals and dealing with paperwork. So I brought the radio back to the sound workshop.
I’d also ordered a mini-amp online that would sit inside the radio, along with an in-ear monitoring system, and I was hoping to hook it up to the loudspeaker that came with the radio itself. Quite happily, my mini-amp arrived that same day so I could get started straight away.
One problem, however.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn’t expect that the amp would come in pieces and I’d have to solder it all myself.
The amp before assembly, shown with the radio.
So now I had to solder this thing, having never really paid attention to circuit boards before. I dug out some instructions (all two pages of them) off the company’s website and set to work.
Most mini-loudspeakers will simply be attached to the IEM because they’re self-powered; however my setup just so happened to need an amp because it was just the cone that sits inside the radio.
That said, here is probably the most common way to create a practical in theatre with the basic workflow as such: Qlab playback software – mixer – IEM transmitter – IEM receiver – mini-amp – loudspeaker.
The chart below shows my system diagram for the show, so that we can see where the practical resided in the larger scale of things (relevant signal flow is highlighted).
