Other Ideas

Practical radios are almost two a penny in theatre, among other fan favorites such as doorbells, telephones, intercoms, etc., all of which would have their own tried-and-tested ways of being produced.

For instance we’ve had a couple of shows that require practical mobile phones, and for this we use an app called StageCaller that works over MIDI/OSC – an iPhone is needed to do this, as well as Dropbox, and for the best results, a stable Wi-Fi connection that’s used solely for the phone. The sounds need to be downloaded from Dropbox and uploaded to the app.

To get the sounds onto the StageCaller app you’ll need to download them from Dropbox and upload them in the app. Qlab is just sending OSC (Open Sound Control protocol) commands – all of the audio “lives” in the app.

From there, the sounds can be triggered via OSC from the assigned Qlab file (with relevant IP addresses), and in the most recent version, the app allows setting up “heartbeat” pings so that it doesn’t become completely inactive and triggers precisely when it needs to.

There are various other little tricks that can be set up, too, including the sound cutting out as a character lifts the phone to her ear, or no sound at all and just a text vibrate.

Working The Process

Back to the radio, I powered through and soldered the entire circuit board and tested it by plugging my phone into the mini-amp via a mini jack cable and hooking up two other loudspeakers (L/R) that also came free with the kit from the online shop. Miraculously, it worked!

The amp inside the radio, hooked up to the internal loudspeaker – IEM not pictured.

So now I had a working system, and all that was left to do was to find a way to attach all of this inside the radio (lots of glue and Velcro were involved here – not my finest prop making), and then plug in the IEM (for this project I used a Shure PSM300 personal monitoring system). Then it was time to have a go at sending audio to it via Qlab.

It worked like a dream and was the most stable practical that I’ve used – of course I had a backup in place just in case something went wrong with it, which is also quite common practice.

The backup was simply an assigned key on the mixer (a Yamaha 01V96i) that the sound operators could press, with the audio being sent to the radio reassigned to route to a JBL Control 1 loudspeaker rigged above the stage – which would hopefully not interrupt the action! (As it was, the backup was never needed, but it’s very good practice to have something in place anyway).

The operators, who took it in turns working the show every day, then had the task of looking after the practical radio and changing the batteries before every show.

To me, practicals are little bits of fun that we can add in to a show to represent something that otherwise, a good few years ago, would have ended up being played from the nearest loudspeaker, or being mimed.

We’re quite fortunate that we now have such wide ranges of technology to play with, and again, tricks up our sleeves to truly create our own version of reality.

Editor’s Note: The author would like to note that Shure is a key industry partner of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), working with students to support high standards of technical training through loaning the latest sound equipment and offering advice on its usage.