Broadway Sound Designer (and now Producer) Tony Meola

Tony Meola gets clear about levels and loudness

Tony Meola was a producer and sound designer for Lysistrata Jones both on and off Broadway in New York. We sat down with him to talk about the show, and couldn’t fit the whole conversation in print. In this web-bonus Meola talks about maintaining levels and comprehensibility in a mix as well, the differences between straight plays and musicals, and the lost art of projecting.

Stage Directions: When you're working on a show with a live rock band, I assume there is a certain volume level that you don't want to get above. How do you determine what the peak level is going to be?

There is a basic difference between Rodgers & Hammerstein or Sondheim and Elton John or Lewis Flinn. A lot is determined by the composer. This show got a little bit louder than I wanted downtown. But most of the time you go back and forth and find the middle. I always think that you should never, ever want to think, "Wow, that's loud," because as soon as you do that you've missed a lyric or two. We went back and forth with the opening number several times because you want to start big, and it starts with a huge boom. In the beginning, she's a goddess, you want her to be big and full, yet you don't want it to be too loud. It's really hard not easing into the show because I find that even when it's as clear as can be and not too loud, people still have a hard time getting the words in the beginning, especially when the actors are all cloaked and speaking together.

Once in a while you see a show where the band is onstage. This group is upstairs and fairly prominent, even if they're not brightly lit. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a band onstage instead of in the pit?

One is they tend to perform better. Sometimes musicians get a little lazy in the pit because they're not seen—or the ones that aren't seen spend a lot of time reading between numbers. You can't do that on stage. You're always in front of the audience, so I think from a performance point-of-view that's a big advantage. Of course, the big disadvantage is having a live band right there where all your actors' microphones are. The biggest problem is usually drums, but in this case we're using electronic drums. They actually don't make but a sound, and the live percussion helps us with a little bit of live stuff coming out, but really no one else, except for the acoustic guitar and percussion, makes any noise on stage.

You have seven people in the group, with two on percussion.

There's a drummer, percussionist, guitarist, bassist and two keyboards.

You've done big shows like Wicked before, but this is more midsized.

It is midsized. I'm getting older, and one of the pleasures of working on a show like this when you're older is people listen to you. When you're the oldest guy in the room and the one with the most experience, people tend to listen, which makes it kind of fun in a way. Every single show is hard. Having experienced on Wicked that they wouldn't give me two contracts in sound, which makes it more difficult to have control over the entire crew, on this show I just insisted. I wanted the backstage person to be on contract because they need to swap jobs, which they can't do if one's on a local contract and one's on a pink contract. I also have the greatest operators, Chris Devany and Josh Mazsle, who are fabulous. Chris mixed the show in Dallas and moved to New York to mix the show here. She's doing the backstage job and is going to stay here. Josh mixed the show downtown and is mixing it now.

There's a lot more technology on Broadway these days, even since the time we first spoke back in 2004. What do you think about the changes that are going on sonically? Are you worried about shows getting too loud, and do you worry that sound is becoming too noticeable in some cases?

I've always been a critic of shows that make it sound like a CD or a recording because that's not what excites me in the theatre. When you walk down the streets of New York and there's a flutist playing on the corner with a case open, you have a visceral reaction that makes you turn to hear that live moment. When you have a record store that has a speaker hung outside the door, you don't have the same reaction as you do in the theatre. I think when we forget that, when we completely cover up an orchestra pit or take a violin and put it in another room, I think we're doing a disservice because we need to hear that stuff and to hear it as it's heard. Having just said that, here I am with electronic drums, but this is pop music. This isn't Lincoln Center or Guys & Dolls or Pal Joey. I think we need to stay near that natural stuff as much as we can.

So you're using electronic drums to control the volume?

Yes, absolutely. When we were doing the show downtown at the Judson Church gymnasium, you and I couldn't have a conversation if there was anyone else in the room speaking. And it would be hard anyway without any amplification. I put my foot down in the beginning and said we can't do this with real drums in the space. We didn't have the money to put him in an air-conditioned box, so we got the drums sounding okay downtown and got a better drum kit uptown and a keyboard programmer who could actually be there all the time. Take the third part of the opening number which is "party party all night long," and you've got these drum riffs that are so electronic it's disco. That's what's called for. Believe me, if this were more of a chamber piece and there were violins and celli up on that platform, I wouldn't have them sounding like a CD.

There are very few dramas on Broadway that are miked beyond basic foot mics.

I haven't done a play in 100 years that I haven't been asked to amplify.

It can be very minimal. On Frost/Nixon I didn't notice any amplification.

When I did Copenhagen, because of the staging, the two men were very often sitting in chairs opposite each other, one on stage left and one on stage right. It was really hard in the then Royale Theatre, if you were sitting very far on the right, to hear the guy sitting on stage left because he had his back to you. The only thing we did was took a shotgun on each side of the stage and pointed it towards the chair, so the stage right shotgun actually amplified a speaker that was house right. So when the guy was sitting on stage left, we could actually hear him coming out of the speaker on house right, both upstairs and downstairs. That was the only amplification we used on Broadway. But on the road we opened in California, at the Wilshire Theatre I think, and we used foot mics. But Len Cariou spoke so quietly. We had regular microphones with us for huge theatres, and they ended up using them at the Shubert, which was the second stop in Chicago, simply because he didn't project. It's a very simple thing: If an actor projects you don't need amplification, in many old theatres especially.

I'm not sure many young actors are learning that skill.

I'm sure they're not. Many years ago I did Picnic at the Roundabout Theatre, and the older actors in the show were absolutely brilliant. Anne Pitoniak and Debra Monk did an intimate scene that was absolutely brilliant, and you could hear every word everywhere in the theatre. Then every time we would ask Ashley Judd and Tate Donovan to speak up, they would feel like they were shouting. You always wanted to say, "Act like you're not shouting." That's what is not being taught anymore.