Heaven Can Wait

By Harry Segal. Produced by the Mira Costa College. Directed by Tracy Williams. Composition by Paul Durso.

Heaven Can Wait featured the main character, Joe, playing a live saxophone, and the angel characters playing a prop piano. 

A speaker was placed inside of the prop piano to sell the localized sound, while an ethereal reverb was mixed into the house surround speakers to compliment the angels playing it. In a production environment, seemingly simple ideas like this require clear communication and collaboration between the director, set designer, shop, and technical director to achieve the desired speaker placement and run of cables.

A love theme was composed as melodramatic underscore, which grew in its arrangement along with the characters’ relationships throughout the story.

This production was a great learning experience, as it was the first time I delivered a surround mix for a theatre. The initial mix, done in a recording studio, did not translate well to the theatre’s system and acoustics. Time is rarely a luxury in theatre, so I learned the importance of advocating for quiet time during the production process so that sound can be best tuned to the room, as well as the difference in mixing in a dry studio environment versus a large and lively theatre.