‘MOLE MAN: THE MUSICAL’

When I first got the first ‘finished’ draft of the script and entered the production process, I found that the show lent itself incredibly well to the kind of atmospheric, surreal soundscapes I specialise in. However, I was quite concerned I would go overboard and end up overwhelming the show. So, I sent the creative team a series of Google Drive folders to act as an initial ideas portfolio, accompanied with this document:

Initial Sound Ideas:

From a very early stage, we had already segmented the show into three levels of framing devise: ‘Buzz Purgatory’, or the meta-level in which Buzz, our narrator, plays around with the story, ‘Courtroom’, or the traditional framing layer from which the worms tell their story, and ‘Storyland’, or the story being framed. While the Courtroom states would be silent, the others would contrast in their soundscapes, with Buzz Purgatory being high-frequency-heavy, and Storyland living in low and bass frequencies.

While some aspects did get cut along the way, I was very surprised by just how many of these original ideas stayed.

Example Rehearsal Drop-In Notes:

I often found myself using my rehearsal notes as to-do lists over the course of this project, which explains the green highlighting. As you can see, while a lot of my initial ideas were incorporated, some were discarded during the rehearsal period, either due to changes in the script (of which there were a couple of major ones, to clarify Buzz’s role in the show among other things) and things that did not quite work in practice. However, some of the redundant notes actually became quite useful for lighting purposes, as the jobs I once gave to sound were given instead to lighting.

Cue Sheets and Stacks (LX and Sound):

Surprisingly enough, this project saw my QLab doc and lighting cue stack differing quite a bit in relation to my cue sheets. This was mainly because though I had the groundwork done, a lot changed on the fly and in the space, especially LX-wise. So, here’s a snippet from the same section in both:

Sound cue sheet:

There were a couple of major changes made to this cue sheet. I added the ‘voxpop’ segments (or the verbatim recording edits that featured throughout the show) after the fact. This part of the script also changed quite significantly, going from Buzz imitating the other characters and being stumbled upon by Wilma, to Buzz controlling Wilma, and Wilma snapping out of it. This also reflected in the disparity between the QLab and cue sheet. Cue 33, or the splash into The Long Wriggle, also changed in a way I found quite satisfying, so that it would cut Buzz off before he reached the perfect cadence from the intro into the first verse.

Final QLab Doc:

LX Cue Sheet

LX Operation ‘Cheat-Sheet’

Believe it or not, these were for the same section of the show! Because of those script changes and the venue’s tech spec, I had to change quite a bit. But, I ultimately felt like all these changes were much-needed, and suited the show much more.

Also, to explain the ‘cheat-sheet’: because I was operating both sound and lighting and didn’t want to be flipping through cue sheets, I learned both stacks, and made myself a very basic sheet to guide me if I got stuck on LX.

Here are the tracks I originally sent to the creative team, for which the timestamped explanations can be found above!

And, here are some other odds and ends from throughout the show, including soundscapes soundscapes and edited verbatim recordings:

Photo credits: James John Barlow and Jessica Barrett