It's often difficult to understand children talking in a stage play because of muddy room acoustics and poorly designed PA systems that feed back easily. Wireless headworn mics can help, but not every school can afford them or control them effectively. So floor mics are used instead.
How about this: Place a floor mic on the stage. Feed the mic signal to a speech recognition device, and display the actors' lines on a video screen. It would distract from the stage action, but at least you could understand the lines and follow the plot (kind of like closed captioning).
Another option: broadcast the mic signal (or the sound-mixer signal) to an assisted-listening system of headphones. But you'd need hundreds of headphones.
Maybe broadcast the voice-recognition display to the smart phones of audience members. Or live-stream the audio to the smart phones (ideally with very low latency), so the audience can listen on earphones if they prefer. Then they can hear the actors clearly.
The best solution might be to re-do the loudspeaker placement and directional pattern to prevent feedback and increase intelligibility. Place the loudspeakers close the audience, far behind the mics. Use loudspeakers that focus sound on the audience, rather than spilling the sound onto reverberant room surfaces.
How about this: Place a floor mic on the stage. Feed the mic signal to a speech recognition device, and display the actors' lines on a video screen. It would distract from the stage action, but at least you could understand the lines and follow the plot (kind of like closed captioning).
Another option: broadcast the mic signal (or the sound-mixer signal) to an assisted-listening system of headphones. But you'd need hundreds of headphones.
Maybe broadcast the voice-recognition display to the smart phones of audience members. Or live-stream the audio to the smart phones (ideally with very low latency), so the audience can listen on earphones if they prefer. Then they can hear the actors clearly.
The best solution might be to re-do the loudspeaker placement and directional pattern to prevent feedback and increase intelligibility. Place the loudspeakers close the audience, far behind the mics. Use loudspeakers that focus sound on the audience, rather than spilling the sound onto reverberant room surfaces.