A brief hiatus - Come From Away
It has been a joy to work with Newtheatricals on Come From Away’s Australian premiere season and today we’d like to celebrate the incredible achievements of our team, particularly the two sound crew who have made this challenging and technically unique show possible.
Come From Away, a Canadian musical written way back in 2013 and first premiered at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, opened on the 30th 0f July 2019 to full houses and immediately captured Melbourne audiences hearts. The factually inspired story tells of 38 planes grounded in Newfoundland during the 9/11 attacks and the heart-warming stories of the people that welcomed them into their town and made them honorary Newfoundlanders in the process. Come From Away would go on to sell out consistently during a period where many well heeled productions in Melbourne have been struggling to fill seats, telling of it’s universal appeal.
Drawing much complimentary attention, is the fact that the show itself if superbly directed around what is essentially a very minimal set and cast. The set itself is static, with no moving parts other than the very ordinary chairs that the cast use to imply and create settings throughout the show. The cast itself is composed of just 12 people and the band similarly, is just 8 musicians including the musical director, Luke Hunter.
This relatively simple show - in both appearance and storyline, belies an extraordinary amount of technical effort that, to the design of the original Broadway production helps create a stunningly coherent vocal quality for performers, and creates a warm and rich musical quality with composers Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s catchy and emotive original folk score.
The sound system itself is highly complex and comprehensive in coverage for the entire audience, employing a vast array of the highest quality D&B speakers in conjunction with the stunning Avid Venue S6L console. To be specific 91 speakers! 26 of these were the main left and right line arrays - D&B Y8’s. There is also a centre hang of the compact but powerful T10’s. The show was equally amply supplied with subwoofers, with 10 V-subs, four below the stage and 6 hanging on the truss above the audience.
The show also has a surprisingly large count of wireless with 48 radio channels, 38 wireless mics, the twelve cast wearing two radio mic packs each in case of technical failure (and also due to the cast not leaving the stage during the entire performance) and 21 channels of wireless for roving musicians with wireless instruments and in ear monitors for the band. The headset microphones worn were the superb DPA 4066 boom microphones which were customised by hand to perfectly fit each performer, firstly at our warehouse by Sally Hitchcock and Natalie Riordan and thereafter by the show’s crew, being the aforementioned Nat and Anto Shaw.
But enough about the equipment, time to talk about the people behind putting this show together. As we assembled the system to designer Gareth Owen’s specifications, the set-up had two late arrivals, the main system of speakers from Germany, and also its supervisor, Julian Spink. Fortunately, associate designer of Book of Mormon, Dave Greasley kindly spearheaded the build with the team, having to leave directly to set-up Book of Mormon in Adelaide as both Julian and Gareth’s representative Russell Godwin arrived just in time for the bump in at the Comedy Theatre. Also deserving a special mention during this period is Shawn Unsworth as technical build crew and David Letch, who as Production Sound Engineer helped assemble and plan much of the system, going on to installing it and getting it open with the show crew and designers. The speakers, before mentioned, would arrive from Germany the day after opening when the crew would have to come in and completely swap the PA out from the temporarily hired speakers to the new system… on their day off!
Anto as Head of Department, opened the show, learning what turned out to be a very intense mix by any operators standards whilst juggling the various demands of management, band concerns, fader flipping and an international designer at the same time. Not only does this show have 2222 Qlab cues, but also such a fast and unrelenting barrage of desk automation cues that the operator has to mix the show whilst firing cues with a foot pedal. Whilst this practice exists - rarely - this is certainly the first instance where it was entirely necessitated by the sheer speed of the shows design. Natalie Riordan, Deputy Head of Department would learn the mix following opening in incredible speed -guaranteeing the shows safety as quickly as possible. Nat was also able to master School of Rock in record speed so she was naturally the perfect person for this show - one of the most difficult we’re aware of.
The mixing console to compound issues further is uniquely situated at the back of the grand circle of the theatre, as far away and high above the stage as possible. This maximises the available premium seats for the producer, maximising profits. See below photo for the view, if one stands on ones toes to see above the mixing console!
Anthony “Anto” Shaw, (Head of Department) recently having come off Jersey Boy’s second Australian tour, has a long history engineering and operating some of System Sound’s largest shows, some of Australia’s most recognisable productions. Anto started with System Sound in 2005 on a show Stuff Happens, coincidentally both at The Comedy Theatre, but also produced by Come From Away’s Australian producer, Rodney Rigby! This was followed touring with We Will Rock you briefly sojourning as a Head of Video, operating both the LED screens and managing the media servers. In 2007 he worked with Dave Letch on a fabulous but unfortunately short season of Spamalot - the first show to bring Digico’s T (theatre specific) software to Australia on the D5T console. Anto then opened Jersey Boy’s in 2009 and would go onto operate the Australian tour of Wicked for 5 years, travelling Asia and doing two full tours of Australia. This was the second last world tour to operate on a Cadac J-Type, alongside The Phantom of The Opera. Not counting the innumerable Production Company shows for System crammed between, Anto would also tour with Cirque Du Soleil and as before mentioned Jersey Boys 2.0 leading right up to this show. I think it’s fair to say he has quite the resumé and was one of just a very small group of people capable of doing Come From Away let alone with the skill that has helped us earn a great friendship with it’s English designers.
Natalie “Nat” Riordan, the Deputy Head of Department has an equally varied but also extraordinary career as a sound engineer for many theatrical productions. Starting in 2009, Nat would begin working with System Sound in 2012 on The Australian tour of Mary Poppins as Deputy Head of Sound for the Adelaide season. Come From Away marks Nat’s 8th show for System, having operated School of Rock, Mary Poppins, Strictly Ballroom, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to name a few as well as independent of System, Ghost and the Australian premiere of American Idiot.
“The most challenging show that I’ve worked on was Strictly Ballroom, as we don’t originate many shows here in Australia, but it was also very exciting to be part of a Global Premiere. The most difficult mix I have learnt is definitely Cone From Away! It is also the show I am most proud to be a part of- we have a fantastic company, the show is beautifully orchestrated and tells an important story of kindness and compassion.” - Nat
We’re very proud of our crew and their achievements, especially on this show, seamlessly opening and maintaining a challenging show by all standards to the very highest level of quality possible. Not only audience, but fellow industry professionals comments about the outstanding sound and work being done by our crew is a great source of pride and positivity for us as a company and we can’t wait to see Come From Away back in action this August the 8th. Keeping fingers and toes crossed!
Also deserving a special mention are swings Shawn Unsworth and Sunil Chandra who have helped support the operators on CFA from day one.
See the below gallery of photos to get to know our team better and learn more about the show
