This past weekend I had the pleasure of playing console monkey for a production by the Tulsa Ballet. The program featured two pieces, Ma Kong’s “Flight of Fancy” followed by the world premier of “Breakin’ Bricks: Finding Spirit Through Ashes”.
The pieces were vastly different, both in content and in technical production. For the audio side of things, Flight of Fancy was all playback fired by me at FOH. It was straightforward and comparable to work I’ve done with other kinds of dance in the past. I knew I’d want to duplicate my playback tracks for separate processing for monitor feeds. Having worked with the Tulsa Ballet as an A2 before in this space, I knew I could get away with six monitors on stage, three per side. UPJ-1P’s on tripod stands hid out of audience view behind the plaster line, with UPM-1Ps mounted to lighting booms at midstage and upstage on both sides of the stage.
Breakin’ Bricks, however, was an entirely different beast. The show utilized large projectors to send video content to the upstage wall. The content was a mix of historical footage, scenic scape, and a lot of personal interviews. The audio was a mix of music (which varied from Kenyan Drums to Cherokee Tribal Music to Queen Latifa), sound effects, an the raw audio from the personal interviews. All playback came from the video department and I took six lines (stereo dialogue, stereo music/FX, mono dialogue, mono music/FX) into the console.
Breakin’ Bricks ended up being a unique piece for me to work on. Due to scheduling conflicts, our QLab programmer ended up unavailable for a few of the rehearsals, and I ended up being the prime candidate to replace him, with someone backfilling my spot babysitting the console. Though I have some experience with video programming in QLab, this was an entirely different level and a very unique show to work with.
Both pieces ended up translating well and we did a pair of shows to very pleased audiences. As a ballet fan myself, it’s always a treat to work alongside dancers and creatives who have committed their entire being to their art form. I don’t have any bad cell phone gig pics to share this time, maybe there will be some on the next one.