Broadway musical The Book of Mormon was conceived in 2003 while South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were meeting with friend and producer Scott Rudin (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) in Manhattan. Noting the similarity between Team America's marionettes and Avenue Q's puppets, Rudin suggested they see Robert Lopez' Broadway musical. Afterwards they discovered a shared interest in both musical theater and Mormonism. After years of collaboration and workshops, they went straight to Broadway, with rehearsals and previews each lasting less than a month before opening March 24 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on 49th Street.
Best Sound Design
The hilariously irreverent musical was nominated for 14 Tony Awards, winning nine, and Best Sound Design went to Brian Ronan and his team, including associate designer Ashley Hanson. Ronan was also recognized with a Tony nom for Anything Goes, which won him a Drama Desk Award. Last year he designed Green Day's American Idiot, and designs for Everyday Rapture and Promises, Promises both received Drama Desk nominations. In all, Ronan has designed 25 Broadway shows the past 15 years. He also designed Spring Awakening, which ran for over two years in the O'Neill five years ago, so he and production mixer Chris Sloan play this room like Lang Lang plays piano.
Ronan has long been a fan of L-Asoustics' dV-DOSC compact line arrays. But this time, he was faced with a challenge when he began the sound design. The set for the show features a false proscenium resembling Salt Lake City's Mormon Tabernacle, complete with a golden statue of the angel Moroni on its pinnacle, which spins at one point in the show. In order to not block the statue, Ronan had Sloan hang a downfill array of nine dV-DOSC cabinets in a nearly horizontal orientation in front of the real proscenium.
The "Money Seats"
"Chris did an amazing job of turning my downfill design into a reality," says Ronan. "The tight pattern of the dV-DOSC array allowed us to hit everything from the first row all the way back to the under-balcony overhang without splashing onto the stage or balcony rail. It's a relatively small area to cover, but it's an extremely valuable one, because those are the ‘money seats' where the critics and highest-paying customers sit."
Twin arrays of six dV-DOSC flank the center downfill array above the false proscenium, aimed at the mezzanine seats below the balcony cross-aisle. Further back on a front-of-house truss, a second pair five-box dV-DOSC arrays cover balcony seating above the cross aisle, delayed to blend seamlessly with the proscenium arrays.
For low-end, a single dV-SUB sits on each side of the stage at the orchestra level. Above, a row of three dV-SUBs is flown between the FOH dV-DOSC balcony delays, with the center cabinet reversed to create a cardioid array.
"One big issue in a traditional theater is achieving even low-frequency energy throughout the house because you can't just stack subs on or off the stage and expect them to propagate evenly," Sloan explains. "However, Brian's decision to put a second set of subs up with the delay truss speakers allowed us to get more low-frequency energy into the balcony without overwhelming people down front, and the cardioid pattern also kept us from putting that energy onto the stage."
The Laughter Factor
"An unexpected challenge to the design was the need to deliver the show's fast paced string of clever dialogue and intelligent lyrics over the audience's laughter," says Ronan. "The show is a constant stream of comedy, which is why it was absolutely critical that we cover every seat with a full-on vocal system that would allow the front row, back of the balcony, and everyone in between to not miss a single line – even during the biggest laughs. This system very effectively achieves that."
Ronan and Sloan first met many years ago as apprentices for Masque Sound, who supplied the system. Since those days, they've used dV-DOSC together on a number of Broadway productions in recent years, including Promises, Promises and Next To Normal.
"I particularly like dV-DOSC because it crosses over at around 800Hz, which is a lower frequency than some of the other brands, without sacrificing intelligibility," the sound designer adds. "This helps the cabinet sound a little warmer right off that bat without any EQ. I really appreciate that as a starting place. Plus, I love the flexibility of the array designs. It's nice to be able to pick and choose how much I want to spread a cabinet and how many seats I want to hit. I've always found it to be an extremely versatile box."
Meyer CQ-1 self-powered speakers are used at each side of the proscenium on the orchestra level with CQ-2s above for the balcony. In what's become a Broadway standard, EAW JF80s are used for the surround system, four on the each of the side and rear walls downstairs, four more across the balcony front and eight more upstairs. Another standard, d&b audiotechnik's E3, are employed in two rows of seven under-balcony delays, plus additional fills in orchestra-level side areas and boxes above. E3s are also built into the front of the stage.
Consoles and Mics
Sloan is mixing his third show on a DiGiCo SD7T, configured for 132 channels (a few extra) and credits it for its familiar SAM-like software designed by Andrew Bruce. A four-engine TC Electronic M6000 is used for reverb and surround. Sound effects play from QLab on redundant Mac Minis with MOTU 828 interfaces. Backstage, orchestra inputs are fed to eight Aphex 1788A 8-channel mic-pres, whose analog splits feed a Yamaha DSP5D supplying a dozen Aviom A-16II personal mixers in the pit, plus two rack-mount Avioms. Jason McKenna, the pit monitor engineer, assists.
Microphone choices in the pit include Shure on the drum kit in its Clearsonic Sorber and Plexi doghouse, and Neumann, Sennheiser, AKG and DPA on the brass, reeds, percussion and strings. Actors are miked – with the help of radio tech Mary McGregor – using Sennheiser MKE-2 lavs with SK-5212 compact transmitters, with leads Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells double-miked. Good luck getting a ticket – even Geoff Shearing can't get a seat.
