I guarantee that you've never seen anything like Slava's Snowshow. It will transform your perception of clowns in the way that Cirque Du Soleil has reinvented our idea of the circus. The two-act show features a yellow clown and his green companions wandering the stage, improvising various gags and parodying many famous movie or theatre clichés, from two people lost at sea to two lovers parting at a train station. And they do so in brilliant and unconventional ways. The costumes are wild, the set pieces are surreal, and the climactic "blizzard" that engulfs the audience has to be experienced to be believed. Make sure you stay during the intermission, too, as the clowns come down from the stage to wreak havoc and play around with the audience. Sound supervisor Keith Rubinstein mans the boards for the Snowshow, and he has worked on it since it opened at the Union Square Theatre two years ago. Rubinstein worked for the venue for four years on shows like Our Lady Of 121st Street, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and More, starring Yeardley Smith, a.k.a. the voice of Lisa Simpson. But despite his solid resume, nothing could prepare Rubinstein for the unique experience that is Slava's Snowshow.
Is this the first city that Slava's Snowshow has been performed in, or has it been performed in other cities?
The show's been touring for about 12 or 13 years now. They've been all over the world. It's originally a Russian troupe, and now there are two companies. There is the touring company, which is the original company with Slava and his people, and then there's the New York company, which is a mixture of some of the people from Slava's company and new people.
Has the show changed much since it came to New York?
It changes daily, depending upon who's onstage. The actors have the freedom to improvise a little bit. The backstage people, and definitely the front of house people, like the lighting op and myself, do have a little bit of freedom to improvise with them.
You're called the show's sound supervisor.
Sound supervisor is the appropriate title. I was taught by the original designer, Rastyam "Roma" Dubinikov. He's a genius, in my opinion.
Who came up with the music?
It's a mixture. Some of the pieces are pretty well known.
Like "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana?
Exactly. Slava and Roma collaborated and came up with a soundtrack, but Roma also has some of his original music in there. All the atmospheric sounds, like birds or waves or anything that's real, are all real sounds. He went out with a MiniDisc player and a microphone and recorded everything.
You were brought in to do the live mixing. Is there a lot of music timed to specific actions in the show?
Yes. The cast rotates a lot, so a different clown will play a different character. The yellow clown switches sometimes. They all have completely different timing, so I have to know who is going to move how or when.
Which means that things won't be perfectly synched.
That's OK because they're clowns, and that's all fine and good. But I've been doing it long enough where I can predict what somebody is going to do.
In the show you have clowns doing surreal, strange parodies of things, and a lot of it is set to music. There are other times when certain sounds need to be synched perfectly. How much of the show is comprised of things that are specifically timed?
All of it. I call everything myself. I have to watch every move.
What kind of board are you running?
An Allen and Heath GL2200 with approximately 32 inputs.
Are you running any processing or other outboard gear?
There are a couple of Behringer processors, and I have a dbx 266 compressor that I use on the microphones. That's pretty much it in the way of processing. It's just more of a speaker management system, and the way it's set up is that there are a couple of different systems. There's a stage set, which are Mackie SR450s. Those are self-powered monitors, and those are on stage behind all the stage legs. They act as monitors for the actors, and also with something like the steps, when it sounds like it's only coming from the stage, that's that set of speakers. The main set is actually Community 915s and 920s, which is a strange brand, but they sound really good to me. The subs are 12-inch EAWs, LA series.
How many speakers do you have total?
Twenty-four total. There are three different brands — Mackie, Community, and for surround sound and the top is American Audio, which are for the balcony and for behind the orchestra. There's also an overhead cluster, but I don't know if you can really hear that in the house too much.
There are two points, at the very beginning and very end, when the show gets really loud.
I actually toned it down a slight bit.
Really? It was louder than that?
Oh yeah, you have no idea. If Slava's around, he'll always make me turn it up.
He doesn't worry about his family audience?
The show wasn't really developed for children or families. In Europe and Russia, clowning is very artistic and a lot different than how we think of it in the United States. I had no idea about it until I started with the show. So it wasn't developed with the thought of it being a kids' show. It's sort of sold that way now, which is fine, although they really don't recommend it for children under eight. That's around the age when the ears start to become fully developed.
Obviously most of the clowns are not miked.
Sometimes it varies, but for the most part it's just the yellow clown that has the microphone.
Essentially, having only one actor mic with this show means you don't have to have it on very much.
It's about as little as it gets with that microphone.
I remember one gag sequence where the clown keeps falling off a chair and screaming.
There's another piece that you may not have seen when they use whistles.
I saw that, and there is also one gag sequence involving one clown and two phones.
Then at the end there's a howl.
What kind of mics are you using?
A Sennheiser wireless lav mic. I think it's the E series, Evolution.
So you were talking about improvising before…
Yeah, everybody improvises. That's what's exciting about the show. It's never exactly the same. The outline is there. There's a lot of crowd play, so sometimes you get somebody who plays really well, and there's a magical moment that happens that you never see again.
Of course, this means that people can go back to see it more than once and be surprised.
A lot of people do. We have some people who have seen it 10 or 20 times. It's so different and fun, even if you see it a few times. What I think is that you miss so much the first time you see it. When I first saw it, I was supposed to be training, but I disconnected that first time because I was in total awe of what I was seeing. I think it's different, and there's some sort of magical attraction that people like.
What else have you worked on previous to the Snowshow?
I've actually worked in this theatre for four years. I've also done tech work for different companies. I've worked for the White House. They came to New York right after 9/11, and President Bush was giving a speech at the Armory. I helped them install a sound system and got a little certificate of appreciation from the White House. I've also done a lot of load-ins for different stuff I can't even remember. I worked for a small performance space called PSNBC, which was for NBC Television, and one of the producers over there had a showcase spot in a small theatre downtown on Spring Street. I ran sound for shows there and comedy nights.
Comedy shows must be interesting to work on because you have people screaming into the mic one minute, then whispering into it the next.
Oh sure. In situations like that my favorite piece of gear is a compressor, so I'll try to use that if I can.
Do you think any of your comedy club experience helped you with Slava's Snowshow?
Definitely not. There is absolutely nothing that can prepare you to run Snowshow. It's so unorthodox. Everything is run off of MiniDisc players. Roma gave me the Russian discs that he had, so I had to take his MiniDiscs and record them onto my own and put English text in so I knew what everything was. That was kind of a challenge, to say the least.
What other challenges has the show presented to you?
Just being able to cope with the different actors' needs, because sometimes an actor will come to me and say that they want something that might be in conflict with the original design. I've just learned that if somebody asks me to do something, I'll just do it.
So you try to be as accommodating as you can?
Absolutely, especially with Russian people. They don't like to hear "no" or "I can't" or anything like that. [laughs] That's another thing. When I was handed over the show, I got some cue sheets from the Russian sound designer. They were all in Russian, and I don't understand Russian. I had to get them translated and develop my own sheets, so I had to watch the show about a thousand times before I even got to run it. I was used to having a stage manager calling cues, or an SFX system or some kind of professional playback system, and then they brought in the MiniDiscs, which I wasn't really used to. And there's a lot of stuff on the MiniDiscs that really push things to the limit. There are a lot of loops, so sometimes I'll have to go into the menu in the middle of the show and switch some settings.
Do you enjoying working on Slava's Snowshow?
Oh yeah. I wouldn't have stayed for two years if I didn't like it! It's given me a lot of design experience. Now I'm starting to do something with one of the clowns in the show. We did a show last Monday that was kind of an improv thing, and he asked me to compile some music pieces and some original sound stuff. It was pretty interesting. I definitely value the experience that I've gotten, more than anything else.
