Flying Away: live mixing and creating the sound design for The Musical Fun Home

Abstract

Throughout High School I was always interested in sound design. I had worked on multiple performances during my four years at The Roeper School, gaining a deeper understanding of how to create a realistic space through sound, but I wanted more. This lead to me pursuing technical theatre as a hobby during my time at Kalamazoo College. I decided during my study abroad while doing a difficult sound design for a show called Secret in the Wings that this was what I would like to do for my Senior Individualized Project. While deciding to do sound design for the Festival Playhouse’s Fall of 2017 musical, I came to the realization that I was also passionate about live mixing and audio engineering the show Fun Home. After making this decision, I realized how much of a work load this was going to be, so I met with Jon Reeves over the summer to talk about what would be required of me upon returning to Kalamazoo College for the performance. Right before rehearsals started, Lanny Potts and I talked about the difficulties of having the band house left of the performers and doing the performance in the round in a space acoustically built for a thrust stage. These early conversations led Lanny and I to have a much easier time creating an equalized sound by the time the show was running.