Titanic: The Musical

Titanic The Musical  was a show performed at King's School Rochester in the final days of March 2019, and served as one of the school's largest-scale senior productions to date. It is a musical retelling of the tragic events surrounding the RMS Titanic, a vessel famous for having sunk on its maiden voyage back in 1912.

I was primarily involved in the project through my commitment to the school's Theatre Production group. Over the six-month development process on the project, I leant assistance to a plethora of different jobs that needed to be done in order to get the show on its feet. However, none of these were as involved as my dedicated production role of 'Sound Desk 1'. This role put me in charge of operating the 24 radio microphones used throughout the almost 3-hour long show - a job which I ultimately ended up doing alone on all 3 nights, putting me as the sole mic operator on the musical. This required me to have an advanced knowledge of which character had which radio microphone at all times, as well as knowing of any changes that had been made and when the characters were speaking in turn. This could not have been achieved without the assistance of my 3 talented 'mic runners', who were in charge of switching microphones between members of the cast offstage, and communicating with me via headset when any changes had been made to the ordering. I also managed this role with an extensive spreadsheet which detailed the exact mic plot of the show - a document which I had perfected over the course of several weeks alongside the rest of the sound team.

Whilst I was primarily focused on the tech side of the show, I was also interested in being a part of the cast as well. Despite my dedication to running the sound desk, as well as my inability to sing, I was, after discussing the dilemma with the show's director, Karen Hebden, eventually cast as the 'unfortunate' Frank Carlson - a businessman from Poughkeepsie who misses the boat. This granted me my own, small scene within the show, located at time stamp 19:20 in the recording. Naturally, being the sound desk operator, I was unable to have my own microphone for this section (as there was nobody to make sure the volume was appropriately adjusted), and so had to rely solely on projection. Ultimately this role was a lot of fun to play, and always got some good laughs and applause from the audience!

Despite being performed over 2 years before I left King's Rochester, Titanic The Musical  served as my last proper production, as The Macbeths  was cancelled due to Covid-19, and A Christmas Carol  was re-imagined into an audio play format. Regardless, it was a truly satisfying end to my on-stage acting at the school!