The Dallas Theater Center has staged an outdoor production of Working: A Musical using CO-8WD waterproof headset microphones from Point Source Audio.
Based on Studs Terkel’s book, and with original songs by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), James Taylor and others, the production opened at the start of July – the Dallas Theater Center’s live audience work since March 2020.
Working showcases the voices of teachers, waiters, truck drivers, and other essential workers, so the production was, in part, performed in recognition of these people’s service – particularly throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Away from the sound quality, one of the main considerations behind the choice for the CO-8WD was the setting for the production.
‘This show is outdoors, in Texas, in the middle of summer,’ explains Kyle Jensen, Assistant Head of Audio and Video for the Dallas Theater Center and sound designer for the production. ‘The weather is a really important factor to consider, so the fact that Point Source Audio mics were waterproof was a big selling point to me. We anticipated really high temperatures and humidity levels, so something that stands up to that sort of abuse was very important.’
This said, the CO-8WD proved itself to be the right choice with its sound quality too. ‘In the pre-prep process we were able to play around with [the mics], and they sounded fantastic,’ Jensen reports. ‘One of the things that stood out to me as well as my staff engineer was how good they sound on female cast members, or people with higher voices. My staff engineer is female, and we put the mic on her and when she started talking, it had this really nice fullness about it that a lot of microphones sometimes lack with people who have higher timbre voices.’
In addition, safety of the performers was a further consideration. ‘Just considering the amount of people that would be possibly coming into contact with these microphones, I wanted to make sure that it was not only something that was extremely good sounding but also something that would be able to withstand repeated alcohol swabs,’ Jensen says. ‘The ability to self-mic was important too.
‘Everyone in the cast was double-miked so we could cut down significantly on the number of times our audio tech needed to go and fiddle with someone’s microphone. All they needed to do was battery up the transmitters, put them at their dressing room stations and walk away. This was also the reason why we went for the Point Source microphones; I wanted a boom-style microphone for the show that would be easy for the cast members to hook on their ears without worrying about audio engineers getting involved in doing it for them.’
With the production run now complete, Jensen is happy to have welcomed a live audience back to the venue. ‘It has been wonderful to have a live audience back, particularly one made up from so many healthcare and essential workers,’ Jensen says. ‘Working: A Musical was such a cool show, honouring these people who deserve to be recognised, and the Point Source Audio microphones performed flawlessly throughout the run.’
