February saw the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) stage a brand new adaptation of The Who's legendary 1973 double album Quadrophenia, which inspired the 1978 film of the same name.
Staged at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, the entire performing and technical crew of the production were students of RWCMD, which was also first independent theatrical production of Quadrophenia to receive the endorsement and creative input of The Who’s Pete Townshend.
It was a fantastic opportunity for the students - supported by dedicated tutors who are all experienced in their own fields - to be literally thrown in at the deep end. Here they experienced the very real scenario of working with cutting-edge production technology on a very high profile show, with the short technical rehearsal times that are a feature of theatre productions.
With digital audio increasingly common in musical theatre, a Yamaha M7CL-48 console was chosen to mix the show, with second year student Seeta Mistry as the show’s FOH engineer. Seeta was tutored on the console by RWCMD ‘old boy’ Nigel Thomas, with some help from Yamaha’s Karl Christmas.
Having previously been head of sound at Bristol’s Old Vic theatre school - where he determinedly introduced digital audio and, through that, earlier Yamaha digital consoles to the students there - Nigel’s recent experience with the M7CL on an Opera Babes tour convinced him that it was the ideal console to give Seeta the best possible start in digital audio.
“Having been a student at the RWCMD, it was a nice approach by the college to ask me back to help with FOH on the production of Quadrophenia,” says Nigel. “My experience at the Old Vic Theatre School had shown me that Yamaha digital consoles make ‘going digital’ for live sound so easy that when Gareth Owen at Orbital Sound suggested I use an M7CL for the for Opera Babes tour, I needed no persuasion. Within 20 minutes I was up to speed on it.”
