Hamlet at Carrie Furnace with Quantum Theatre

Inside the “powerhouse” at Carrie Furnace. Here’s where it all started. It is a highly reverberant space filled with excitement and challenge. And then on the eve of the sound load-in….a change of venue.

seating banks go up

Tate teaches Elle how to use a Hellermann sleeve.

Tate and I wanted to create a rig that would allow the mic to sit away from the face, in order to protect it from make-up and heavy sweat. We also wanted to get as close to the actors’ mouths as possible since we wanted the highest gain before feedback possible. We knew that we’d be competing with large freight trains passing by. Little did we know about the impending fireworks!

Actors working on the set.

Silhouette against the sky

The first night of rehearsal revealed the silhouette of the blast furnace. So cool!

Rainbow behind the Furnace

Our loudspeakers aren’t rated for constant use outside. Many had to be cut, but the ones remaining needed some protection when the rains came. Unfortunately, some micro-bursts caught us by surprise! We’ve lost some time from rain delays but at-least we’ve seen some very lovely rainbows!

We moved outside! We went from many refelections all over to some reflections behind and on one side and a completely open field on the other side and behind the seating bank.

A cicada was singing on a pipe. I was too slow to get my recording rig out but did catch it on video. It soon departed. I was able to extract the audio from the video and process it with granular synthesis. Turns out it sounds rather ghostly!

Rain delay - some days just feel like a slow drip in a leaky tent.