One of the most intriguing plays to hit Broadway recently is the compelling drama Democracy, inspired by a real-life political scandal within the German government. Set at the start of the '70s during the Cold War, this imported British play explores the complex relationship between West German Chancellor Willy Brandt (played by James Naughton, whom you've seen in Nexium commercials) and his assistant, confidante and secret East German spy Günter Guillaume (Richard Thomas of Waltons fame). While the show tosses the audience into an overwhelming vortex of political and historical references during its first act, its more personal second act offers a rewarding emotional payoff. The man behind Democracy's Yamaha DM2000 board, and also the show's associate sound designer, is Broadway veteran Christopher Cronin. He has been a sound designer for Life (x) 3, Def Poetry Jam, Al Pacino's Salome and The Graduate, production sound engineer for Annie Get Your Gun, Closer, The Blue Room and The Chairs, and associate/assistant sound designer for Noises Off, The Search For Intelligent Life in the Universe, The Full Monty and Amadeus. And those are just some of his credits.
Before a recent matinee, Cronin spoke to FOH about the challenges of being an associate sound designer and mixer, and about the art of atmospheric sound in theatre.
How did you come to collaborate with sound designer Neil Alexander on Democracy?
I do quite a bit of associate sound design work for British designers, and every year there's a couple of plays that get imported from London, and I happen to know a few of these London designers that work over there. An organization they put together last year–the NTNY, National Theatre New York–was responsible for producing the revival of Jumpers last season at this same theater, the Brooks Atkinson. This year they're doing Democracy, and then in the spring they're also doing a show called The Pillow Man.
I've been working with this National Theatre New York group as the associate sound designer/production engineer. Neil and I had met doing a revival, a British
production of The Chairs, five or six seasons ago. How it worked on Democracy, basically, is he let me know the parameters of how things were set up in London. Rather than sending him over here to look at the theater and design the sound system to suit the theater, he and I collaborated over the phone and via e-mail, talking about the requirements of the show.
Since I'm familiar with the space, having done a number of shows in this theater, and he's familiar with the show, we collaboratively worked on the system design in terms of speaker systems and positions. In terms of the playback aspect of the show, that is mostly a modification of what he had previously done in London. He basically brought discs over and tweaked a little bit here and there, adding in a few new things. So he was over here for a total of maybe three weeks. I operate the show…
Do you mix it every night?
I mix it every night, but I also supervise things like programming for the understudies and voiceovers for new understudies. Day-to-day kinds of things like that; being that Neil's located in London, he is not available to do them for the production.
None of the actors, except for those who make brief speeches, sound like they are miked. Are they?
They're not miked with RAF mics. The mic on Willy Brandt is purely an effect. He's supposed to sound like he's talking on a microphone in a large hall. But there is some vocal enhancement that is done primarily towards the back of the orchestra underneath the balcony and upstairs. There is some vocal enhancement done via area miking. Our primary foot mics are Crown GLM-200s, and a mixture of shotguns–upstairs and in the back–mostly Sennheiser MK-70s and a couple of MK-60s.
Where are these placed to enhance the sound?
At the entrances left and right on the stage there are shotguns in the doorways and downstage to the sides. The upstairs is primarily covered through shotguns. There is an upstage area for shotguns downstairs, but downstairs, the majority of the area miking is done with six Crown GLM-200s.
The miking is very subtle.
The beautiful part of the GLM-200s is the hypercardioid pattern in a very small lavaliere microphone, so you'd never see them because they're just these tiny little black things sticking up right at the edge of the stage. They're hypers and close-coupled to the floor, as a Phase Coherent Cardioid would be. But because it's a hyper it's a longer pattern, so as the actor walks closer to the mic, instead of getting louder, they're going off-pattern. They pick up very well upstage, and as people come downstage, they still pick up very well because as the source gets louder, it's progressively moving off-pattern, so it makes for a very smooth enhancement system. We don't like to say reinforcement quite so much because we try not to make it obvious.
There aren't that many bold sound effects used. They're there for very specific moments, like the hustle and bustle of the office after a quiet moment, or the sounds of the Berlin Wall chipping away near the end of the show.
There are a lot of things that are subtle and scene-setting. There is quite a bit of interaction between Willy Brandt and the unseen audience during his speeches. There is a lot of atmospheric stuff. When we're in the café, there are background café noises. When we're in Norway, there are some loud birds and frogs. When Günter is taking his trip/get-away, as he's in the car, we're listening to the engine shift. There is actually a lot of sound used somewhat delicately in terms of ambiance.
How is being an associate sound designer different than being a sound designer?
I do quite a bit of both. I've probably been an associate on 20 of these plays, but not just British sound designers. I have some clients here in the U.S. I mostly see what I'm trying to do as assisting the designer in the technical aspects of realizing his design. Sound design has become an extremely technical discipline. I haven't picked up a razor blade in at least a decade, and I don't think they teach that kind of stuff in schools anymore. While sound design was always a very technical discipline, I think it's more so now because there are far more tools. In the average show, I have three or four different computers. It used to be you'd have three or four tape machines and the console.
The number of parameters to worry about has really exploded. What I do is allow the sound designers to actually concentrate on sound design and think compositionally about sound cues, and not have to worry quite so much about speakers and amps.
Do you mix shows you do sound design for?
The shows that I work on as a sound designer, I rarely actually mix, and I do associate work when I don't mix. But the majority of times I'm used as an associate are for shows I was mixing anyway, and the sound designer might not be able to be present if he's from the U.K. I can go to production meetings and go into recording sessions, if need be, to do things. I liken it to being a second unit director on a film.
