Masks, a Chorus of Fourteen, and a 412-Seat House
A director is staging a 90-minute adaptation of Euripides' Medea in a 412-seat proscenium house: a 28-foot-wide by 16-foot-high opening, a 12-foot apron, and a 22-row orchestra. The chorus is 14 students wearing rented molded full-head masks with only a narrow mouth aperture and no usable eye holes; the mask's eye position sits above the actor's own eyes. At the first run-through, viewed from row 22, the director hears mush rather than text, sees the masks read as pale blobs against the black masking, and watches the chorus drift downstage until they stand under the proscenium arch. Rehearsals continue for three more weeks. The lighting inventory is 14 ellipsoidals, 10 fresnels, and 8 PAR cans on 20 dimmer circuits, with a $1,200 rental allowance. The director's instinct is to rent 14 body microphones. The stage manager has asked for a written plan before the next rehearsal.
1. Evaluate the director's plan to rent 14 body microphones. What would you recommend instead, and on what grounds?
Read the worked answer
Recommend against 14 body mics, for three reasons that interact.
Signal path. Fourteen open lavaliers inside full-head masks, mixed by one operator with no A1 and three weeks of rehearsal, will produce comb filtering and gain-before-feedback problems. The mask encloses the capsule; the mouth aperture is the only port, so the mic picks up breath and cloth rustle at least as strongly as it picks up projected voice. Every actor who turns upstage - the mask's best angle for the audience - changes that ratio.
Cost. Fourteen channels of wireless, even at $35–50 per channel per week, consumes most of the $1,200 and leaves nothing to light the chorus. It also adds battery and check-in duties to a crew that has three weeks.
It treats the symptom. The intelligibility failure is placement and technique. Masked actors must speak on breath, aim text out through the aperture toward the back of the house, and slow the rate; choral speech is delivered in unified groups, not as 14 separate lines.
Cheaper triage: two or three area mics across the apron and chorus block, or four wireless rented for the chorus members who carry solo lines. Test from row 22 before buying anything.
2. Where should the chorus be blocked, and how should the 14 bodies be arranged across the opening? Justify the choices in terms of the mask.
Read the worked answer
Find the sightline arc before finding the picture.
With a mouth-only aperture the actor's usable cone of vision is narrow and tilts with head angle; the mask pulls the chin down, so what the actor sees is more floor than house. Practically, the chorus must stand far enough upstage that a tipped head still puts the aperture level with the audience's eye. Walk that arc on the deck with a student in a mask, checking from row 1 and row 22, and tape it. Everything downstage of the line is solo territory only.
Composition. Fourteen bodies across a 28-foot opening gives two feet each - a picket fence, and masks occlude perfectly, so anyone directly behind another disappears. Cluster into three pods of four to five, staggered upstage and downstage, with the downstage pods offset so no aperture is blocked. Vary levels with seated or kneeling pods.
Movement. Drift happens when actors have no fixed target. Tape a home position for each pod and give each pod a specific reason to travel. Reserve the apron for the Messenger and for stichomythia delivered by two or three maskless or half-mask actors, where the audience can see a face for contrast.
3. Using the existing inventory and the $1,200 rental allowance, propose a lighting approach that makes the masks legible from row 22. Prioritize and justify the spending.
Read the worked answer
Masks are a relief sculpture; front light erases them.
- Side and three-quarter light from ladders or box booms at roughly 45 degrees elevation and 45–60 degrees off center. This is what models brow, cheek, and nose. If the booms are far, rent narrow-barrel ellipsoidals - $1,200 typically buys 8–10 units plus gel for a short run.
- Top light from the first and second pipes, fresnels as a soft wash. This is the specific fix for "floating blobs": the crown of the mask must not vanish into black masking.
- No saturated front wash. Deep color flattens mask relief and destroys the value contrast the audience uses to read the face. Open white or pale straw at low intensity.
- Backlight on the chorus for silhouette moments only - the PARs, if they exist in sufficient number.
Spend the rental on side units and gel, not on more front light. Mark each chorus pod as a focus special so intensity can be balanced pod by pod; that is cheaper than adding circuits. Test the focus from row 22, not from the booth, and photograph it for the director.