Paul Arditti and Christopher Reid are nominated for a Tony Award for Sound Design for The Inheritance. The pair previously won a Drama Desk Award and an Olivier Award for the UK production of the same play.
Arditti has won a Tony for his work on Billy Elliot The Musical, and although Arditti and Reid have worked together for ten years, The Inheritance is the first production they share a co-designer credit.
The two talked to Live Design about their working methods, moving the production from London to New York, and how one professional turned to gin during the pandemic.
Live Design: How do you work in partnership with your co-designer, Christopher Reid? Are you equal creators or does one of you take on more technical responsibilities?
Paul Arditti: From the first show we worked on together, over ten years ago, I felt that Chris understood what I was aiming for, whether it was a soundscape for a play, or the design of a big sound system, or the mix for a musical. It was only a matter of time before we co-created something. This is the first time we have worked together as co-designers, although Chris regularly looks after international productions of Billy Elliot the Musical for me as my trusted associate.
Christopher Reid: I have to say often find it somewhat humbling anytime we are asked this question. When Paul and I started working together it felt like a partnership from the beginning. Like we were both working towards the same thing. Even from day one, as an operator, I felt that my input to the overall sound of the show was valid.
PA: The Inheritance came about because I had read the play and fallen totally in love with it, then found myself unavailable for much of the original Young Vic rehearsal and tech period. I designed the sound system and Chris did most of the content design for that first production. For the transfer to the West End, Chris did more or less everything, and we got nominated for an Olivier Award—thanks Chris! For Broadway, it was the other way around, and I was the boots on the ground.
CR: To this day, working with Paul and his extensive experience and knowledge, I am continuously learning from him—and I hope along the way he has picked up a few things from me, too.
PA: Absolutely! I revel in our complementary skillsets! Chris is the expert when it comes to live mixing, radio mic camouflage, Qlab scripting and making iPhones ring and play video on cue!
LD: The play is seven hours spread over two nights. Did you find it challenging because of the scale of the project or did that give you a bigger canvas to work on?
CR: I think anyone who read the text back at the very beginning, before we’d even started rehearsals, knew that this production was going to be exciting to work on. And more than that, it was an important story to tell. The running time was never really a consideration for me personally. Plays like this don’t come along very often.
PA: I obviously get exhausted far more easily than Chris! If I’m honest, I always struggled with the length of the show. On Broadway, where we had six weeks of rehearsals and eight weeks of previews, I found that I needed the occasional night off to get some perspective. Luckily my brilliant and indefatigable US associate Sam Schloegel was always there to stand in and note the show.
LD: Did the length of play allow you to spread out a sort of arc for the sound design to compliment the narrative? Or were your choices based on individual moments?
PA: Actually, the length of the process was as important as the length of the play. The narrative arc of the sound design and music developed incrementally through the three sets of rehearsals and three sets of previews. Stephen Daldry never stops experimenting in search of perfection, and that means as designers we have to go down a few blind alleys. Chris, you did a lot of the early work, offering up musical ideas even before Paul Englishby, our brilliant composer, was brought on board. By the time we opened on Broadway the sound design was really finessed – the first play started minimally: just the men on that empty stage, and the stories, no introductory sound at all. The sound world developed slowly, only really showing its hand by the end of the first act when we start to see how AIDS ravaged the gay community. From then on, the sound world ebbs and flows, usually supported by musical elements in the score.
CR: Agreed! I don’t think it was the length of the play that shaped the arc of the sound design but rather the writing; the play itself. Anyone who has seen or read will know what an emotional rollercoaster it is.
LD: What were the main elements of the sound design that evoked New York City in the various time frames? Did you find a go-to “hook” to take the audience with you to those specific eras?
CR: Not specifically. There are multiple little hooks which occur and reoccur in the sound design and in Paul Englishby’s score, but these are more character related. They’re more connected to the emotion of particular moments in the plot rather than specific eras in time.
PA: Yes, the narrative of the play usually leaves you in no doubt where and when you are at any moment: usually the characters just tell you, with direct address. This freed us somewhat from the duty of evoking a particular time and place with realistic sound and allowed us to be more expressive. There are obvious exceptions: phone rings and texts, email sounds, party music, the hospital – these things are correct in terms of time and place, and hopefully go almost unnoticed because of that.
LD: You have been with the play through productions at the Young Vic, Noel Coward, and then onto Broadway. How much the sound design changed, and if there were things about the moves which proved challenging?
PA: At the Young Vic we were able to concentrate on the content of the sound design, and Chris spent many hours in the theatre developing what were to become our main themes. I’d say 80% of the way the show sounds now was developed in that first production. Luckily, the Young Vic is an intimate house, and even quietly-spoken dialogue reaches the audience, so we didn’t need mics. When we transferred the show to the West End, we were all keen to maintain the conversational style of the dialogue, and the transverse blocking--by which I mean actors talking to each other across the stage rather than out at the audience. We didn’t want our actors to have to speak loudly throughout the show; we also didn’t want to lose the dynamic range and musical texture of the show—if dialogue is difficult to hear there is even less room for underscore! We specified radio mics for the Noel Coward. The use of radio mics still gets a lot of push back from performers in the UK, who often feel they will lose their natural contact with the audience when they are miked. Also, producers in the UK usually need to be convinced that the considerable extra cost is worth it. I hate having to insist, but experience shows that even in a play, it’s better to have the option of mics than not, if the playing style and the acoustics of the theatre are likely to make intelligibility problematic in some parts of the auditorium. It’s more or less impossible to retro-fit radio mics during previews. We did also experiment in the Noel Coward with foot mics at the front and sides of the stage, and there were some group moments in the show where these did a great job. However, there is no substitute for the magic of a well-camouflaged mic, mixed line-by-line like a musical, and amplified subtly through a properly tuned and distributed sound system. I believe that most of the audience don’t even know the show is being miked, and I feel like I have done my job by handing the dynamics of the show back to the performers. Chris and I would like to thank John Kauble and Wally Flores for mixing the show so consistently and accurately on Broadway. It was no easy task to concentrate on dialogue for three and a half hours at a stretch without missing a syllable. As joint A1s, they swapped roles daily between front of house and backstage to keep themselves fresh!
LD: What did you find to be the most challenging aspect of the design and why?
CR: One of the greatest challenges with any play that is “secretly” radio miked is concealment. The mics, packs, and cables need to be invisible. The job was made more difficult by naked and nearly naked performers on stage at various points in the show, and of course the water thrown in performers’ faces and over their heads during the wedding scene!
PA: I would also add that Jon Clarke’s beautiful lighting was full of strong keylight from the sides and backlight from low par cans in the upstage corners. This really showed up any lumps under costumes caused by mic packs, and any mic cables not completely flush with the skin. In the West End, we used our go-to mics, DPA4061s, with Shure UR1M transmitters. On Broadway, we really wanted the tiniest mics and packs we could find, so we went for Sennheiser MKE1s with Shure ADX1M transmitters. The cable on the MKE1s is super-thin and the mic head is barely over 3mm in diameter, which helped to disguise them. The Shure Axient packs are remarkably small, with no antenna or sharp corners, and sound great, so we got the best of all worlds. As well as not being able to see the mics, we wanted the audience to believe that they are hearing the performer from the stage and not through a loudspeaker. The sound system needs to be acoustically invisible too, and this is achieved with careful speaker distribution, eq and zoned delays. I think the trickiest part of the system design in the US was the sub bass. Broadway theatres were not designed with big bass loudspeakers in mind, and the seating density leaves few spaces on the floor to place subs. Getting subs into the air is feasible, but there are load limits to anything you want to hang. Creating an even coverage at low frequencies in an odd-shaped room like a theatre is always challenging, but The Barrymore was extra tricky. The sound design for The Inheritance doesn’t rely heavily on sub bass, but the moments of high volume and impact were unexpectedly difficult to achieve!
LD: What is your favorite part of this design?
CR: From a content point of view, I have a few favorites, but one that really stands out for me happens towards the end of act one. One of the characters, Walter, has a twenty-minute monologue where he tells another character about his experiences of moving to New York, finding a community, friends, love and eventually tragedy. It’s written almost like a love letter to his past. During this monologue there is a subtle but quite detailed soundscape that enhances moments within that love letter, but never stands in the way of it. I am always very proud of how we achieved that. From a technical aspect, the onstage sound system comprised a number of very small speakers which we used to localize real world sounds to specific places on stage. We matrixed the same audio to parts of the main sound system, maintaining that same localization but reaching every seat in the house. I always thought it worked incredibly well.
PA: I have to add that the end of the first play–the Peter West sequence–never failed to make me cry. Paul Englishby’s music was perfect at this point, and we made the most of the surround speaker system with reverbs creating space and immersing the audience in strings and synth pads.
LD: Can you talk a little bit about your go-to gear?
CR: If I had to name particulars that we couldn’t be without, definitely Figure53’s QLab software, and d&b’s DS100 Signal Engine. All go-to kit is subject to change as the technology evolves.
PA: I’d agree with the above, although I’m very excited by new software and hardware from Meyer and L-Acoustics which might soon challenge the dominance of the DS100 in our kit list. I’m also currently loving Ableton Live as a host for plug-in reverbs, especially the Lexicon PCM bundle, which is definitely my go-to for live use. As far as speakers are concerned, I think the wide range of small point source boxes from d&b is currently unparalleled, especially for drama, where even coverage and consistency of the sound signature across the range is more important than sheer volume.
LD: Lastly, as things return to normal, what do you think will change in the live entertainment industry?
CR: I don’t think that even now we have a clear and full picture of how this pandemic will affect live indoor performances. Here in the UK, we are starting to make inroads into the recovery of the theatre industry but it will be a slow start. There are many social distancing measures and other restrictions in place along with new transmission preventative measures, all of which we will adapt to, and live with, until such a time as we can return to fully functioning, restriction-free performances. One day!
PA: I have a friend who is a projection designer. During the lockdown, he started making small batch gin and vodka from the workshop in his garden, which used to house his video studio. He reckons that it will be a year before producers are once again willing to invest in video at any scale in commercial productions, so for now he’s selling booze!
Whilst I don’t think that sound design is likely to suffer similar delays when live theatre returns, I do think that new shows on a similar scale to The Inheritance will be produced with tighter budgets, fewer staff, and with sound equipment that the rental companies already own—at least until confidence and international travel return to our big theatre cities. There are some areas which I reckon will jump forward quite suddenly when we return to work. There is a lot of new kit which major manufacturers have developed over the last year, and they’ll be working hard to sell it to us. Could be exciting! Also, there has been a great deal of talk in the freelance community over the last twelve months about improving inclusivity and fairness.
I have reason to believe that we will see a more diverse workforce on our return, especially in our creative teams.
Finally, there has been a distinct change in emphasis regarding the academic teaching of sound design during the pandemic. Because we haven’t been able to work together in theatres, a lot of training has been forced online. There is a now a new generation of sound designers with fresh experience in emerging online artforms, the latest ideas in electronic music composition, film and video techniques, binaural headphone recording, and innovative audio for podcasts. These exciting creative variants will doubtless be heard in theatres over the next few years. There is a lot to look forward to!