When the venue is compact, you need a quality compact PA system. And room for the people-eating alien plant.
Cremorne Theatre is a part of the larger Queensland Performing Arts Centre or ‘QPAC’ which is home to five world-class and state-of-the-art performance spaces. With seating for 300 patrons – and much of that can be retracted to create a flat-floor auditorium – the Cremorne is the smallest of the QPAC venues, but it’s versatile in design and that seating capacity is always an attractive compromise to productions which can pull a crowd without risking the dreaded empty chairs.
The ever-green Little Shop of Horrors has just completed a six-week season at the Cremorne with all of the 51 performances sold out. You can’t ask for more than that. It’s a show that’s constantly evolving as advancing technology allows for more creativity in its themes of horror (obviously), science fiction and aliens… in a fun, dancing and singing kind of way. War of the Worlds it ain’t.
It was put on by Woodward Productions, and Alex Woodward has had a long association with Ben Murray of PQI AudioVisual, who in turn is no stranger to the Cremorne Theatre. Ben’s an accomplished sound engineer, musician, AV rental business and IT specialist – yes, he’s a clever bloke and the list goes on. However, his first love is being either behind or in front of the mixing console, and preferably in a theatre.
THE CHALLENGE
With the close relationship between Woodward Productions and PQI, Ben is given pretty much a free rein – within reason, of course – to provide lighting and sound for Alex’s creations. Music for the show was performed by a six-piece rock band in a separate room, connected for audio and video monitoring, and likewise there were backing vocalists and the ‘voice’ of the alien plant. So from a sound-source point of view, Ben only had the actors on stage inside the theatre itself aside from two speakers above the plant to provide a voice. Bringing it all together with full coverage of the seating, with power and clarity, was an interesting prospect because of the relatively intimate venue. It needs a clever balance of amplified sound that doesn’t dominate or diminish the live action right in front of the audience.
As Ben puts it, “I want to create an almost cinematic experience, not immersive because it wasn’t a surround sound design, but a sense of filling the space with great sound that complements the acting and singing rather than any sense of disconnect between the PA and the performers.”
Sightlines and rigging space were at a premium even though the Cremorne is well featured in that respect. It is, after all, a 300-seat venue. With PQI AudioVisual also providing and supplying the lighting rig for designer Declan O’Neill, everything had to be taken into consideration from the start. There was no “we got there first” squabbling over what gets hung where.
THE FIX
All the above is why Ben is a big fan of dBTechnologies VIO Series loudspeakers. “They have such a small footprint and yet deliver such a clear, impactful sound,” he says. “We’ve been building our inventory of VIO loudspeakers over the last seven years, and in the many productions where we’ve had that need to keep a low profile PA-wise, VIO fits the bill perfectly.”
In the Cremorne, Ben was able to deploy a LCR hang of five VIO L208 units in each array with the speakers at the maximum tilt of 15º to cover the front seats. There was no room on the stage for any kind of front fill, so the suspended arrays had to do the job.
“We were tempted to use six VIO L208s in the arrays, but it was just a step too far when it came to sightlines. It turned out we didn’t need them anyway. It worked brilliantly.”
The theatre has a rear balcony of seating under which the remaining seats fold under, and in keeping with that cinematic experience Ben had some dBTechnologies X206 loudspeakers on a delay to reinforce the main PA, along with some side-fills for good measure from X205 boxes. The side-fill was also put to good use delivering sound effects and some unique patches played on the keyboards – the musical was originally composed with some classic synthesizers and where possible the producers are asked to reproduce these.
The subwoofers were a pair of VIO L218 subs placed under the retractable seating – that’s innovative and kind of cheating at the same time.
THE RESULT
The success of the show speaks volumes for how well the dBTechnologies loudspeakers did the job. You don’t sell out 51 performances with crap sound… okay, the acting and singing and overall theatrical production values probably contributed something too.
“Reliability is another factor of the VIO,” Ben says. “When everything is in place and working so well, you don’t want anything failing and disrupting the show. You can rely on the VIO, not just here but in more extreme conditions too. And I have to say they’re cost-effective as well. We’d all like to have bottomless budgets, but it’s simply a fact of the industry that it’s rarely possible. The VIO Series is well worth a look if you have a tight budget.”
At the end of the Little Shop of Horrors season Ben can happily report that everything went flawlessly thanks to his VIO array PA design. And no actors were hurt in the making of this musical… well, a few got eaten by the alien plant every night, but that’s easily fixed.
Photos: Jared Adamo
