MIDLAND, Texas – Built in 1929 and designated a Texas State Historical Landmark, the Yucca Theatre in Midland, Texas, is home to the Midland Community Theatre and its “Summer Mummers,” a locally-produced and written show that harks back to the golden age of Vaudeville. The Yucca’s new Electro-Voice XLCi 127DVX sound system is ensuring this unique production sounds better than ever for its 60th anniversary in 2008. The EV system was designed by FitzCo Sound, Inc. (Midland, Texas) and installed by Midland Community Theatre personnel (supervised by Technical Director/Sound & Lighting Designer Eddie Taylor).
Summer Mummers runs for three months each summer and attracts audiences from around the world. The show comprises a “Melodrama” interspersed with “Moviola” segments, with the second half of the evening featuring a rapid-fire set of skits known as the “Olio.” Boisterous crowds are the norm, with popcorn-throwing encouraged; for that reason, a relatively powerful sound system was necessary to ensure intelligibility — especially for the snappy dialog that drives the show — over the noise of the audience. It was also essential that the audio equipment be as unobtrusive as possible with regard to the theatre’s historic Assyrian-style interior. System Designer Milt Hathaway of FitzCo Sound described the Electro-Voice solution:
“The system was designed for greatest gain-before-feedback, while staying within the budget of a community theatre. It has a central array of seven XLCi 127DVX boxes, with a delay ring of seven ZX1i compact loudspeakers to cover the under-balcony area. Power is provided by six P3000RL remote control amplifiers running IRIS-Net control and supervision software (via a UCC1 USB to CAN-bus interface). While the design may appear to be overkill for a house that only seats 550, the system had to be capable of reproducing intelligible speech at sound levels high enough to be heard over the typically raucous crowds that come to Summer Mummers performances every summer. The precise pattern control of the XLCi line array allowed us to achieve this while mic’ing the performers with nothing more than three floor mics and two overhead mics. And I can't say enough about how easily the ZX1i cabinets installed and how great they sound.:
“This particular installation was complicated by an extremely short schedule,” adds Hathaway, “as final approval was not granted until May 5, 2008, yet the system had to be fully operational by the start of tech rehearsals on June 6. Thanks to extraordinary efforts by our EV rep Mike Simon (of The Nix Agency) we received all of the equipment in time, and thanks to LAPS (Line Array Prediction Software) and IRIS-Net (remote-control and supervision software), we were fully prepared for the installation the moment that equipment arrived.”
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