Mixing theater - what I learned

I recently had an opportunity to produce a musical theater group production at 2Rivers. Although the fundamentals were the same (if not more simple than mixing a normal 2Rivers service), the nuances were a plenty. I'm thankful for the experiences we've had so far on the M32, and grateful they paid off in fixing some really early and huge challenges I faced.

The Background
The production was Annie Jr. by LifeLight Youth Theater. My daughter, Lily was the lead role. Here was the setup:

• 12 wireless headset microphones
• 4 principle actors (didn't change mics - most of the dialogue, singing, dancing)
• 2 secondary actors (didn't change mics)
• 6 rotating microphones (for secondary actors and ensembles)
• 5 group numbers with both leads and secondary or ensembles
• 36 audio queues/scenes
• 1 consistent background score source (AV) - this was the easiest part thanks to co-director and her que software!

What worked well

• Having a director who provided clear audio queues so that I could anticipate what needed to happen and when 
• Knowing what equipment I would get to use before the show
• Spreading the wireless mic receivers across both stage left and stage right
• Using both DL-16 stage modules to plug them in, and only using the top row
• Having the snakes going to the DL-16s clearly labeled so that I could easily plug them back in
• Configuring a single page on the board for all the mics I needed

What I found out (the hard way)

• DCAs are frenemies! I tried to use 5 DCAs to separate out the ensemble actors from the leads. This was a horrible idea as the DCAs conflicted with each other. If mic 9, for example, was in multiple DCAs, every DCA had to be unmuted. Which defeated the purpose and destroyed my good intentions.
  
  • ​Solution: since this was discovered during dress rehearsal, I removed all DCAs (except "All Mics").
• Scenes are no good if you don't have the channels configured, leveled, and EQd first. I tried to pre-configure a bunch of scenes to follow along with the script, including all the mute settings. 
  
  • ​Solution: I started over from the top, re-saving each scene. So much for my pre-work. At least I learned something!
• Using scenes just for mute/un-mute is foolish. It's kinda an atomic option for something better served by snippets. 
  
  • ​Solution: I kept using scenes as this was by far easier after having the mics configured and EQd well on the first go around. Didn't have time to go for snippets.
• Too many mute options is wonky. Having a combination of mute group, DCA, and individual channels coming in and out of mute as part of my scenes was way too many levels of complexity. At one point, I ditched all muting except at the individual channel level. 
  
  • ​What I learned: keep it simple, stupid!
• A channel's config may, by default, not even have that channel patched to the main L/R output. 
  
  • What I learned: don't assume anything. Use the config screen. Compare to channels that do work.
• Snippets don't capture everything. I hoped to recover from my pre-configured scene error by using a snippet across all mics but it failed to capture/override some of the basics. 
  
  • ​What I learned: there's a time to learn and a time to execute. Since this didn't work once I gave up and reverted to scenes. More to learn!

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