On Broadway: “Hedwig” and the Secrets of Tony-Nominated Sound Design

It’s a rock and roll story of transformation. But the onstage characters of Hedwig and The Angry Inch aren’t the only ones who were changed by this Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical.

Tim O’Heir’s rookie outing on Broadway was successful, to say the least. (Photo: Laura Hanifin, Copyright 2014)

Up for an impressive eight awards at the just-completed Tonys, Hedwig obviously made a big impact on the psyches of audiences and critics. And while the show’s sound designer, Tim O’Heir, didn’t take things quite as far as Hedwig’s eponymous (and transgendered) protagonist, this glam rock extravaganza certainly sent his career in a new direction: O’Heir’s efforts netted him the coveted “Best Sound Design of a Musical” nomination, despite Hedwig being his first ever Broadway sound design.

(When the winners were announced at the awards on Sunday, O’Heir was giving congratulations: Steve Canyon Kennedy won Best Sound Design of a Play for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Brian Ronan captured the Tony for Best Sound Design of a Musical for Beautiful—The Carole King Musical. See the full list of winners here.)

A hard-working studio producer and engineer who first made his name in Boston’s lo-fi rock underground, O’Heir’s resume runs the gamut from Buffalo Tom, Come, Belly, Sebadoh, All-American Rejects, and Care Bears on Fire, to film score mixes for The Savages and In the Land of Women. It was his work on the motion picture soundtrack of the film release of Hedwig (2001) that set the stage for his high-flying maiden voyage on Broadway – he collaborated with the show’s composer/lyricist Steven Trask for that record, and they’ve stayed together ever since.

Setting the Big Stage

Hedwig packs a solid story, driving a rock musical through and through, one that evokes David Bowie to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop in its 12 songs. It’s been turning heads ever since it debuted off-Broadway in 1998, and the current Broadway cast at the Belasco Theatre raises the bar again, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Lena Hall, and a very powerful band coalescing as The Angry Inch.

According to O’Heir, sound designing the show for the big stage came with its own unique set of requirements. “Hedwig on Broadway presented a whole different package to what it was Off-Broadway and what we did for the film,” he says. “By trade, I’m a producer/engineer, a studio dog used to the controlled environment of a recording studio. The goal for this production was to put a real rock band onstage in a Broadway house and have it translate to not only rock fans and fans of Hedwig, but to the typical Broadway patron.

“We needed to have the band live onstage with no shield in front of the drums,” he continues. “We needed control, but we also needed to ‘push air’ from the amps onstage to gel with the drums, to do what you’d typically do for a rock concert but still be able to achieve the clarity of every lyric. Most of all it needed to rock.”

O’Heir sums up the sound that his team achieved in one word. “Exciting,” he states. “The Belasco Theatre was built in in 1907 as a dramatic playhouse, no music, no amplification — it hadn’t been invented yet. The acoustics are fantastic: a voice from the stage carries beautifully to the last row of the balcony, and we wanted to put a loud rock band and 123 speakers in there. I wanted to do some acoustic dampening to the back walls to cut down on reverberation but it wasn’t in the budget so we had to wing it.”

Once his associate, Kai Harada, was on the same page with O’Heir’s objectives Harada designed the speaker system using programs like Vectorworks and Meyer Sound’s SIM alignment software, as well as working with Hedwig’s system provider PRG. “In the meantime,” says O’Heir, “I was in rehearsals with the band and leads in a small downtown theatre with the mixer, Bob Etter, and a FOH setup identical to the one we’d be running in the Belasco to work with the director and MD to help shape the final outcome.”

Neil Patrick Harris makes a nightly impression in the title role.

When it came time for mic selection, O’Heir chose mics just as he would for a studio recording, and had iso boxes built for the guitar cabinets. “The band’s using Vox AC30‘s and we wanted to keep them on stage for set design as well as sound control,” he explains. “Because the amps had to be cranked to get the desired sound we removed the speakers from the combos, ran the speaker outs to the cabs in the iso boxes and retrofitted small powered speakers into the now empty AC30s.

“Now we were able to have the full meat of the guitars in the house while John Sibley, our monitor mixer, was able to send our mixed guitar signal back through the amps onstage thus allowing controlled sound to come from the stage itself.”

The drums of Hedwig are live and wide open, with no gates and minimal processing. “When we got to the Belasco, I determined that we should not send much of the drum program to the mezzanine and balcony, as the acoustics of the room negated the need to,” says O’Heir.

In keeping with the show’s aesthetic, the vocal mics are all wired and RF dynamic mics – a convenient truth that eliminated the need for the stress-inducing omni mics and transmitter pacs usually used in theatre. All players are using in-ear-monitors, supplanting onstage wedges.

“I made the decision to use strictly software effects and dynamics for the show, and with the combination of Waves and the Midas options we had all our bases covered,” O’Heir adds. “We’re using a Midas Pro9 for FOH and a Pro2 for monitors as well as the Waves Multi-Rack Native rack bridged with a RPM MS48.”

Rising to the Occasion

O’Heir has been involved with the sound of Hedwig and the Angry Inch since the year 2000, but he’s not surprised that the latest version of the show is creating shock waves all over again.

(l-r) Composer/lyricist Stephen Trask, Neil Patrick Harris, Tim O’Heir, Music Director Justin Craig

“This is the definitive version of the production,” he confirms. “Neil Patrick Harris and Lena Hall are outstanding and the Angry Inch, led by Justin Craig, are a tight powerhouse of a unit. I’m beyond grateful to Stephen’s faith, as well as the producer David Binder and director Michael Mayer’s decision to take the risk, and believe that I could deliver what I told them I would.”

Besides learning that, yes, he could successfully transmogrify from a studio rat to a Tony-nominated sound designer in one shot, Tim O’Heir learned something else important from Hedwig: there’s a lot to like about old Broadway.

“As an audio professional, I’m interested in all aspects of the what, why and how people enjoy music and sound,” reflects O’Heir. “I started in a video post house in Boston and worked my way into where I wanted to be, a rock studio (Fort Apache), and then added film work to my resume.

“I love making records more than anything but the immediacy and level of professionalism live theatre provides is beyond satisfying AND it’s an experience you can’t download from a torrent site. People have to pay for it — therefore it’s a way to make a living.”

— David Weiss

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