Disney’s The Lion King musical has been enchanting audiences on Broadway for nearly 18 years, and its massive success has spun off tours and productions around the globe. Despite it being a well-oiled entertainment machine, transferring the show into other venues and other countries reveals challenges — like dealing with the capabilities of each new location. Some theatres can easily handle the requirements of the production while others are in markets with less of an emphasis on live theatre.
Rising sound designer Hugh Sweeney certainly dealt with this challenge when working as an associate with John Shivers and sound designer Steve Canyon Kennedy when they, with the assistance of Masque Sound and local support from Gilsama, recently took The Lion King to the Telcel Theatre in Mexico City. Sweeney undertook all the programming, oversaw the shop build at Masque, supervised installation on site and taught the show mix to the local team.
“It was a wonderful experience,” recalls Sweeney. “I can’t say enough good things about Masque. They are the best sound shop in the world that I’ve worked with, they really have everything under one roof, all the gear you would need to realize the sound design for any theatre show. All the staff are very knowledgeable and genuinely care about the project you’re doing.”
Not only has Sweeney worked with Masque before, but he has been working on The Lion King consistently since 2008 and done eight productions so far, with a Shanghai show coming next year. He has been working mainly as a live engineer and an associate sound designer since he was a teenager, and now he is making his move into sound design, which The Lion King tours have given him good training with, on top of experience on Broadway productions with sound designer John Shivers.
Overcoming Obstacles
Sweeney worked on installing The Lion King in São Paulo a couple of years back, and the experience was different than in other places. He says that while the local shop was excellent, they were not as focused on theatre as Masque. “We use specific equipment and have a different way of working in theatre compared with other types of live performance,” explains Sweeney. “We use MIDI, sound effects and various systems that aren’t so common in the more generic live world. When we’re supplying a show out of Masque like we did for LK Singapore in 2011, we have to make sure that we have everything that we could possibly need, not only for the load-in but also for at least the first few months, because it’s not so easy to pick up the phone and have something FedEx-ed.”
In fact, their gear was delayed in Mexico City for about a week because of their strict regulations for importing electronic equipment. They also have a very high import tax rate. During the intervening week, the crew dealt with the house equipment and prepared rigging and cable runs for when their gear eventually arrived. Their main challenges were being far from their main shop and not having a local shop for any replacement equipment or additional equipment they might not have foreseen needing.
The Telcel Theatre in Mexico City is a fairly new 1,300-seat venue that was originally intended to be a concert hall. Partway through construction, it was shifted to become a theatre. “They added a fly tower and made various changes to the pit and audience seating area,” Sweeney says. “We were the second show in there. I think Wicked played in there for about 15 months before us. We benefited from that, because we had mostly the same staff locally that had worked on Wicked, so they were up to speed with the demands of installing and running a Broadway production. I can’t say enough about the local team there. They were excellent guys led by Oscar Monroy and Miguel Jimenez. They got the show loaded in to a very high standard and are doing a great job maintaining it.”
Each King Unique
The Telcel Theatre has a Constellation system from Meyer Sound installed. It “involves about 50 mics and over 130 speakers distributed throughout the space,” says Sweeney. They use it for their surround system, for which they typically have six channels/side left, side right, rear left, rear right, overhead left, overhead right. They reconfigured the Constellation system to spread out the sound very evenly throughout the entire space.
To ensure Teatro Telcel could accommodate events ranging from symphonic concerts and operas to hard rock shows and Broadway musicals, the architects specified a dry baseline acoustic signature so it could be augmented as needed through Constellation’s acoustical adaptability. The heart of Constellation is a D-Mitri digital audio platform with 20 modules and 57 ambient-sensing microphones. After the patented VRAS acoustical algorithms are applied, sound is distributed to the system of 114 Meyer Stella-4 and 18 Stella-8 installation loudspeakers, 48 UP-4XP 48 V loudspeakers, 38 MM-4XP self-powered loudspeakers, 13 UPJunior loudspeakers, and 24 MM-10XP 48 V subwoofers. The Constellation system was installed by Naucalpan de Juárez-based Teletec.
“We also made use of the acoustic enhancement aspect of the Constellation,” Sweeney continues. “With musical theatre it’s helpful to have a shorter reverberation time than for a concert hall. The physical acoustic treatment that was installed resulted in a very dead space, so I imagine the Constellation was integral to the design of that building. Every wall panel was acoustically absorbent material covered with nicely decorative ply with slots cut in to provide access to the absorbent material. It was a great space to work in, and we were able to achieve a good result with very even coverage.”
While each new production of The Lion King works from a rough sonic template, Sweeney notes that each one is tailored to the space and specific equipment being used. The speaker system is designed from scratch each time, and he always programs from scratch and does not copy and paste anything from previous productions. The show has long-established sound effects, but if they find better effects for certain sounds in the meantime, they are open to upgrading them.
For the Mexico City production, the sound team is mixing on a DiGiCo SD7. “We typically use about 140 inputs,” says Sweeney. “On some other productions we also have an SD8, and on the Australia tour we have an SD10 for monitor purposes.” In terms of the show it’s a fairly recent upgrade/they started replacing previous consoles with DiGiCos in 2010. “And Masque were instrumental in providing the replacement digital package.”
Masque Sound also provided a P.A. system from Meyer Sound, featuring MINAs on the proscenium for the orchestra section, M’elodies for the center cluster and MICAs for the upper right and left. Meyer Sound UPJuniors were used for fills and d&b E0s for front fills to accommodate the tight spaces in the theatre where speakers were required. Meyer Sound 500-HP, 600-HP and 700-HP subwoofers were utilized, as well.
The microphone system supplied by Masque Sound included DPA d:screet 4061s, with Sennheiser MKE-1s as back-up for the performers. The orchestra was also well equipped, relying on Shure SM57 and SM81 instrument microphones, DPA d:vote 4099S clip microphones, Neumann TLM 102 large-diaphragm studio condensers and KM 84s, as well as Radial Engineering direct boxes. In addition, Sennheiser SK 5212 transmitters were used for the show’s 46 channels of RF, QLab 3 for the effects playback and TC Electronics S6000 for reverb. The team tapped into the theater’s existing Meyer Sound Constellation System, which worked well to complement as a surround system.
A Successful Spectacle
After all these years, The Lion King remains a theater spectacle, and one that Sweeney has enjoyed being entrenched in. “I think it’s one of the biggest shows in the world,” he declares. “The audiences love it, and in São Paulo and Mexico I’ve seen the most incredible audience reactions. Maybe people hadn’t seen anything like it before/it’s such a colorful, visual show and is universal. Of course, it’s translated into the local language, but the visual aspects don’t need translation. I’ve really enjoyed it for many years.”
Bryan Reesman, a freelance writer based in New York, is a regular contributor to FRONT of HOUSE affiliated publications, PLSN and Stage Directions magazines.
