mic's needed for this play?

JahJahwarrior

Active Member
it's a 50 foot long, 40 foot wide, 16 foot celiing room, sheetrock walls, tiled roof (those tile that fit into the lattice system stuff, you know??) and linoleum floor. Stage is at one end of the room, ,and it's dimensions are not included, it is probably 20 feet deep, and it is 30 feet wide. We are doing the comedy by Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, and the only stage micing we have are four Crown choir mic things, hung behind the main curtain (one whole act takes place in front of the curtain...). We would need to rent 7 wireless mics. Is it worth it? do I need it??
 
are there good acoustics and do the actors speak loud is what you have to ask yourself.
 
i have found that you cannot rely on actors to project during a show, even if they do in rehearsal. if you know the actors and how they perform from past experience that is different. i would at least rent a couple of condensers to put on stands or floor mics, which i dont like, but they work if u put them on a piece of foam or something to stop them from picking up footsteps. wireless mics are best, but i dont know how much that would cost you. renting wireless is what i would do, but i thought i would let you know about these other options
 
well, it would cost about $400 to rent them all for four days, whcih is how long we need them. There is a local church (my school is a private Christian school) that might let us borrow them. Teh problem is, the drama advisor doesn't like to listen to me, and she doesn't think we need tehm.

The actors...some speak ok, others do not. the room was built to be multipurpose, the accoustics are HORRIBLE. it sounds ilke tonal CRAP when you have ilke, a band playing or something. (my band has played shows on the stage and it always sounds sucky) I really want ot get wireless!!!!!!!
 
try to explain it to your advisor, last year, at one of the 1st rehersals, i told my director that we needed wireless mics because the hanging choral condensers would not sound great. i told her that wireless would be much better and that there was another school in the district that had what we needed, but she refused to ask. at the dress rehearsal she told me that i was right, and that wireless mics would have been the right move, but that it was too late, and she was right about that. the show sounded ok, but we had 6 mics hanging around the stage in a way that worked quite well, so despite the imperfection it was ok, for your situation, it seems imperative to get more mics, and since a local church that will let you borrow them, i see no downside whatsoever, you just have to convince your advisor, and a good way to do that might be to do a rehearsal exactly as everything will be with your current equipment while you still have time to get the mics, and hopefully yoour advisor will understand.
 
we get away without using any mics for plays - if the actor can't project then he shouldn't be acting and should learn to SOON.
 
well that is true rgsw, but the fact is actors suck and require help doing what they do and that is the reason we techs exist... anyway, particularly if the accoustics in jahjahwarrior's theatre are bad, not using mics really isnt an option.
 
we have not used them in the past, but, everyone near the back says they cannot hear well. If the actor is looking straight towards the back, yes, most of ht eimt they project well. There are several girls who just don't project well at ALL, and then, what about profile position? Basically, with this play, there are too many tfactors for me to want to not have mics, but our drama teacher does't like to listen to me, EVER.
 
wait... lemme get this straight, you can borrow mics for free and it would make the production better but your teacher wont let you? i dont get the logic behind not borrowing. try to explain it to your SM or TD and see if they will add credibility to your argument by talkin to the director with u
 
well, we can PROBABLY do it for free, we have to ask the church first, and we ought to do it SOON because they might need to plan something different, they use most of theirs, and we would need them two days that they ahve services...but they wiould probably let us because alot of the school, including the principal, go to the church.

my SM is against it too. this sucks, this royally sucks. I will talk to them though...
 
why are they against it, do they have a reason? my assistant principal who is in charge of the tech dept in general, not really what we do, but when we have to work rentals and whatnot and what equipment we can use... anyway he knows absolutely nothing about tech and wouldnt let me use the school's brand new peavey monitors with my brother's band's equipment for a school performance... to make a long story short, he had a student a few years back who patched school equipment into outside equipment and damaged it, he does not understand that this probably had nothing to do with the equipment and was probably a crappy tech, but anyway find out if there is a reason people are against improving the show and if so try to explain the pros and (nonexistant) cons of borrowing mics
 

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