Reckoned to be the first mainstream Broadway musical about a gay woman, Fun Home explores the chaotic upbringing of cartoonist Alison Bechdel – and in doing so, has taken five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The production saw director Sam Gold (2015 Tony for Direction) transformed the original 2013 off-Broadway proscenium format to in-the-round staging, seeking more intimate and immersive engagement with the audience.
‘It was challenging for all departments and for the cast, but the show took an incredible leap forward,’ says Sound Designer Kai Harada. ‘Now, you feel you’re part of the family, watching Alison’s past come to life. It’s an immersion rather than a presentation.’
Harada’s sound design worked ambitiously to pull the audience right into the warped and hectic world of Alison and her funeral-home-running, décor-obsessed family, by ‘making the sound system disappear, so the audience is not listening to the system but to the show.’
Using an Out Board TiMax2 Soundhub 48-input/48-output audio showcontrol delay-matrix, Harada mapped out 27 onstage zones where key dialogue or singing occurs. He undertook all the planning and pre-production work on the vocal imaging himself, and then it was up to associate sound designer Stephanie Celustka to program his delay-based ‘audio sourcing’ intentions into the TiMax system.
Fifty Meyer Sound fill speakers were positioned on two flown truss ovals (inner and outer) above the stage, five to ten feet apart. The 50 (out of 112 total) speakers used for the audio sourcing included Meyer UPJuniors, UPM-1Ps, MM-4s and M1Ds. A Studer Vista 5 console delivered mic channel direct outs to the TiMax which in turn fed the multi-channel the Meyer system via delay-mapped Image Definitions for each stage zone. System EQ and level contouring were also handled by the TiMax SoundHub
The Source Oriented Reinforcement (SOR) vocal sourcing achieved by the TiMax SoundHub draws the audience into the drama and helps to eliminate distraction by the sound system. Harada confirms: ‘It works seamlessly. The sound is natural and seemingly un-amplified. As intended, it dials up the intimacy.’
Harada credits the producers for their trust in realising his sound design: ‘I warned them in our initial meeting that we would need a lot of small speakers everywhere, and absolutely needed the TiMax system to do a successful sound design in the round. I appreciate that between equipment-provider Masque Sound, the producers and myself we came up with a system that fulfilled the needs of the show and worked within the budget. I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished.’
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