One man. One stage. One microphone. One ambitious actor performing an entire trilogy of famous sci-fi films with dozens of characters. Charles Ross deserves props for taking George Lucas' famous first triad of intergalactic adventures and condensing them into an hour-long solo performance that is equally a loving homage and hysterical parody of this beloved film franchise. Ross plays all the parts, uses no props and imitates as many sound effects as he can, even simulating an X-Wing crashing into the Death Star. In other words, he's like a kid imitating his favorite movie, zooming and rolling around his bedroom, except he's in front of a much bigger audience. It's a show that can be punishing on his body, voice and microphone setup. For four years, this show and One Man Lord of the Rings have been the bread and butter for Ross, who has reportedly seen the original Star Wars movie 400 times. He has played in different parts of the U.S., from audiences as small as a few dozen people to as many as 3,500 at a major Star Wars convention. A week after his FOH interview in Manhattan, Ross went on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and this month, he is off to South Africa and Japan.
Normally in this column, I tackle massive Broadway or ambitious off-Broadway shows that require an arsenal of gear, but this month, I'm taking the opposite approach with a show where the lead actor is also the sound man. But if you think there's little to be learned from a one-man, one-mic show, you're mistaken. Prepared to be schooled by a master of minimalism.
FOH: How have things been going?
Charles Ross: Good. We were gone for a couple of weeks and went to Boston and Tampa. Monster shows. In Boston, we played at the Wilbur Theater for 700 people. It's totally different than what it is here at a tiny theater smack dab in the middle of Disney-ville.
I normally cover shows with MICS 100-plus inputs, but you literally have one mic and two channels of sound. Obviously, you had to pick a specific microphone for the show since it's pretty much nonstop for an hour. What do you use and why?
I've got an AKG SR4000 receiver, and I have has a really, really thin microphone, a C 477 WR L wireless, that's easy to move around with. It's got a small, lightweight earpiece that doesn't come off no matter how I shake my head. I use a Neoprene belt pack. It's been great. This is the longest I've been able to use any microphone at all without it totally smashing. Aside from using lead cleaner, I haven't had to have anything redone. I probably spent $3,000 on the whole setup, and it's been worth every penny, so much so that I bought another microphone because I'm going to be touring in South Africa and Japan. It takes awhile for it to come in when I order it, but it still comes in.
Here at The Lamb's Theatre in New York, you're running an Allen & Heath GL-4000 board, using only two channels. Do you use any processing?
No. Depending on where I go to, if there is a board op or house tech that wants to play around, they're welcome to play around as much as they want and EQ as I go. If I'm there for two weeks, by the second week, I've got somebody that's playing around the whole time, EQ'ing the whole show.
Microphone, transmitter, receiver and belt pack aside, do you bring your own gear on the road?
Usually whatever's in the house, but because we're going to be touring, we're probably going to get a mixing board. I haven't shopped around yet.
You've been doing this show for about four years. What other microphones have you used previously?
I've been using this one for more than a year now. I used to use lav mics. I would get a lot of sound from my body. You saw how I sweat, and a lav mic starts to fail. It's so weird. It shorts out. I sweat a lot, so it gets into the mic pack, which becomes a real issue.
What do you wrap the pack in now?
I use a nonlubricated condom around the actual transmitter. It's stuffed in a Neoprene CD pack for running. I just toss it in, the wire sticks out and leads up from there.
Have you had any issues with the wiring?
Not so far, but what were supposed to be two stainless steel screws on the back of the head pack are rusting. I can't fi gure it out. Of all the things to have that are not stainless steel…people are going to sweat, especially if somebody's doing a long concert. I just know that if I get this thing worked on, I'm going to send it to Nashville because that's the only place I can order this stuff from. I couldn't get it in New York or New Jersey.
So this is the first year you haven't had any major technical issues with your microphone then?
Yes. It really has made my life so much easier.
Did your old mics go out on you?
All the time. But I had to keep going. For two years, I didn't use any mic at all. So if I were in an 800-seat venue, I'd be doing it with my voice.
That's got to kill your voice after awhile, especially with all the non-stop dialogue and sound effects you emulate.
Yeah, it does. The nice thing about having the microphone is that I can do eight or nine shows in a week, if I have to, and even if I'm sick, I can still do the show that night.
Thanks to amplification, you don't have to strain your vocal chords.
Absolutely. It's nice because I think the mic has an internal compressor, so if I get too loud, it won't ever peak on me.
When you're doing the different characters in the show, you're moving back and forth between soft and loud, smooth and scratchy, human and computerized voices. Are you thinking about the fact that you don't want to create distortion when you get really loud?
All the time. The funny thing is, it's nice having very little EQ'ing, but I always have to get used to another sound person every place I go. If I'm playing at a big venue, they have to learn it over the week, and then they start tweaking stuff. They're becoming more a part of the performance rather than me having to modulate everything, whereas if I'm here in New York and there's nobody doing anything, I'm modulating everything on my own. It's a bit of a pisser because if I have more people in the house, I just need the volume boosted up so that I can adjust my voice to do it. I do some voices that just peak out, and I know sometimes there are things I've got where I have to speak out of this side of my mouth or that side of my mouth or speak straight ahead so I'm not getting poppop- pop-pop.
You're a human mixing board!
Kind of. But I had all the years of doing it this way without the microphone, so now I have to adjust. It's a bit of a learning curve, but it's been about a year. The only time I really have any new learning curve is when I have a new sound person who is deciding to be really artistic while I'm doing the show.
So someone might add reverb to your voice when you're playing Darth Vader?
Just a little bit. Enough so that it's not actually me having to do the work anymore. Not all my voices are perfect, but I don't care because that's not the point of the show. The ones that I can do are the ones that I know how to do with my voice already, so if they start screwing with it, doing too many effects, I'm like, "Why don't we just watch the movie? Why don't we just have somebody go into a studio and work on it themselves?" It's kind of weird because I'd love to be able to do a show with tons of effects, and I could work from day one writing and rehearsing it with these effects in mind, but everything was acoustic when I started off. Now I'm trying to make an acoustic thing electric, and there's always the temptation–"let's do a little bit of this, let's do a little bit of that"–and if I come back to a place where I don't have somebody that can do that, then it feels like everything's all acoustic again. You don't want to get used to playing electric when you've been doing acoustic for so long.
