Theater // Current

Events: singles; author talk; meet artist; Ugandan Jews; musical; Maccabi Film Festival

NY Jewish cultural events in the coming weeks include singles events; an author talk;... more

davidfcooper
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7 days ago
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Will 'Carrie' be reborn as a musical...again?

Jorge Carreon blogs on how a Broadway musical version of Stephen King's "Carrie" was a... more

MediaJor
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12 days ago
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When Mafia is afraid of theater

While newspapers are talking about news not important, the Observatory on threatened... more

bibabiba
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15 days ago
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'Brighton Beach Memoirs" Closes on B'Way after 1 Week

To which I say, "Good." That play sucks. Sorry, Neil Simon fans.

St_Alia_10191
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24 days ago
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Invictus Movie Trailer

Clint Eastwood has been working on Invictus, an upcoming movie starring Morgan Freeman... more

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29 days ago
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Microphones Create Controversy on Broadway (Seriously)

"On stage at the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" are seven actors—and 23 hidden microphones. The new musical "Fela!" has 80 speakers hung around the theater, and mic transmitters embedded in a character's tap shoes. And during one song in "The Phantom of the Opera," actors choose whether to sing along—or just mouth the words—to a prerecorded vocal track.

With theater producers increasingly reliant on revenues from touring shows playing spaces with as many as 4,000 seats, more shows are being rigged with miniature mics and high-tech sound systems to project the performances to the far reaches of the theaters. Sophisticated sound mixing systems can make singers' voices sound better than they would otherwise. And, unbeknownst to most audience members, some performers in musicals are occasionally backed by prerecorded vocal tracks, allowing them to sing quietly, or sometimes not at all, during strenuous dance numbers or scenes with complex effects.

Just as Bob Dylan was booed when he "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the theater community is divided over the growing manipulation of sound on stage. Manny Azenberg, 75 years old, whose first Broadway show as a producer was "The Lion in Winter" in 1966, agreed to allow hidden mics on stage in "Brighton Beach" but refused to put body mics on actors. "You lose quality, you lose intimacy, you lose the reality of the theater," he says.

Many theatergoers have come to expect the miking effect. Microphones on stage allow actors to speak more naturally, emulating the more realistic performance style that audiences are used to from movies and television. Audiences also expect entertainment to be louder generally, after years of surround-sound in movie theaters. Sound designers say it's necessary to turn up the volume on actors as Broadway theaters themselves get louder, with automated lighting and set-moving equipment making a continual background noise. "There's very little true quiet in the theater anymore," says Tom Clark of Acme Sound Partners, which is designing the sound for "Bye Bye Birdie" and other shows this season.

Playwright David Mamet is known for refusing to use any mics at all in his plays. It may be a losing battle. At a recent performance of "Oleanna," his play about sexual harassment now on Broadway, an audience member complained at a "talk back" for theatergoers after the show. Dennis Sandman, a 56-year-old financial planner from East Brunswick, N.J., said he couldn't hear the play from the balcony. "The actors should've worn mics," he told the group. "It's important when you have one of these talkathons to hear it clearly."

Stage sound isn't always invisible. Actor Pablo Schreiber was half-naked for much of "Desire Under the Elms," a fraught drama by Eugene O'Neill on Broadway earlier this year. Audiences seated at the front of the 1,623-seat St. James Theatre could see a battery pack in his long johns with his microphone wire running down his bare back.

Mr. Schreiber says initially he was opposed to using a mic, but later realized it helped involve the audience in ways an acoustic performance might not have in a large theater. During his character's love scene with his voluptuous stepmother, played by Carla Gugino, he could whisper to her and look into her eyes instead of projecting outwards.""On stage at the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" are seven... more

St_Alia_10191
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1 month ago
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Culture Clash, 25 Years Out

"A few weeks ago, on a fog-enshrouded night in Malibu, Richard Montoya stepped onstage... more

St_Alia_10191
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1 month ago
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Composer Lloyd Webber Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer

(CNN) -- Andrew Lloyd Webber, the award-winning composer and producer of more than a... more

IndieArtist
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1 month ago
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Avatar Trailer 2 Leaked

A new trailer of Avatar, the new upcoming 3D epic sci-fi movie directed by James... more

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1 month ago
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Independence Day 2 Trailer

The last news about Independence Day 2. Watch the movie trailer soon.... more

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1 month ago
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It’s Complicated Movie

Take a look to the movie poster of It’s Complicated, an upcoming comedy starring... more

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1 month ago
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The Trouble With Actor-Speak

Hadley Freeman writes, "Last weekend, with my brow raised high, I attended the New Yorker festival which was full of people talking, very earnestly, very cerebrally. In other words, it was like stepping right into the magazine, Purple Rose of Cairo-style. Perhaps because I got so carried away on this cloud of cerebralism, I did something I vowed never to do: I went to a talk by some actors.

I have always been interested in what I call actor-speak – and when I say "interested", I mean "intrigued in the way you might be by a man talking to himself, without having any desire to go over and engage him in conversation". However, while I continue to march past muttering men on park benches, I am, thanks to my job, an unwitting expert on actor-speak, having spent many hours of my life listening to actors bang on about their "love of the craft" and "the thing about [insert name of director] – he takes you on an emotional journey".

Some may call this argument prejudicial, but those who do have never spent a morning with Helen Hunt, listening to her expound on her skills. This has nothing to do with lack of respect for actors; just a lack of respect for the language they learn – perhaps at acting school – to describe what they do.

The New Yorker event sounded promising: its panel of pleasing scene-stealers included John Turturro and Joan Cusack. But when – just 10 minutes in – panel member and actor Richard Kind (you'll know him, look him up), said actors do theatre "to nourish themselves", I knew I'd made a grave tactical error. The verb "nourish" should only be used in a culinary context, and even then with restraint.

And, lo, they kept a-coming: there was "our craft" and "the journey one goes on". To finish, actor Christine Baranski announced that "acting is like creating life". Considering this comment came straight after the clip showing her in the sitcom Cybill, that seemed a pretty awesome claim. Shrieking onset at Cybill Shepherd v being God – I guess it's six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Does anyone else on the planet talk about their jobs like this? Well, having spent eight years reporting on fashion, I can assure you they most certainly do. Designer Miuccia Prada, for example, said that her collection for Miu Miu next season was about "questioning innocence". This should be translated to the layman as: "I decided to do cat prints.""Hadley Freeman writes, "Last weekend, with my brow raised high, I attended the New... more