FOH engineers Emily Adams
South Africa - Audio engineer Emily Adams, was working on Pieter Toerien’s previous production, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, when asked to do Evita, the original West End and Broadway production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical which premiered at Montecasino Teatro in Johannesburg and recently moved to the Cape Town’s Artscape Theatre. It is to be followed by an Asia tour in 2018. Emily is operating the show on a DiGiCo SD7T.
It has been an considerable experience for Emily. “It’s my first production as head of department on a show of this scale. I started as a RF technician and I have done many shows at the Teatro Theatre, but I’ve always been the deputy head of sound and only mixed the occasional show, not actually running the show. This has been really challenging and I’ve loved every second of it so far.”
This is not the first time that Emily has worked on the DiGiCo platform. “I would definitely choose the SD7 if given the choice of console for a musical,” she says. “The SD7 is so user-friendly and easy to navigate. Doesn’t take long before you’re jumping between layers and editing.”
The programming for Evita came from Broadway and was adjusted according to the SA version of the production. The audio cues are extensive. With many of the finer details done already, Emily took the basic structure and cleaned it up to adapt it. “I did things like assigning the correct cast members to each control group per cue, I shifted a few groups around and renamed them.”
The Meyer sound system is made up of 16 M’elodies a side, multiple delays and side-fills have made mixing a pleasure for Emily. “Many times, when working on a production, the house is smaller one day and bigger the next and it can sometimes be difficult to adjust and know that all areas of the house are happy. But this system is so well structured across the whole auditorium that I never have to worry about that.”
(Jim Evans)

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