Audient‘s iD22 made its debut theatre performance, with two-time NSDF Emerging Artist Award winning theatre company at the New Diorama Theatre in London, last month.
Sharing the limelight with three performers, including actress & producer Rianna Dearden, the audio interface was used to control the sound on stage for their brand new play, Goodstock.
Rianna explains how the iD22 worked for the show.
“We’ve been using it along with a Novation Launchkey Mini and Ableton Live to play and control all of the recorded and live sound throughout the show. This ranges from pre-recorded tunes to various DJ beats and loops, triggered with the Launchkey, but controlled by the iD22. There are moments in Goodstock where the levels of the music need to be adapted second by second depending on the action happening on stage, meaning it can be controlled safely and easily by the people right there on stage.”
Written by Olivia Hirst, another of the three vibrant, young members of the Lost Watch Theatre Company, the show is an autobiographical piece revolving around how she and her relatives have dealt with having cancer-causing genetic mutation, BRCA1.
Starring Hirst as herself, Illona Linthwaite as her grandmother and Rianna as everybody else, one reviewer praised the show as: “unexpectedly, and incredibly funny”, particularly remarkable when tackling such tricky subject matter.
“All three of us use it on stage: Illona, Olivia and myself, and we’re certainly not sound engineers” says Rianna. “It’s very simple and clear. Being on stage is fiddly enough, but the iD22 is easy to grab and simple to learn.
“The dim and cut buttons have been really useful in an unconventional way compared to standard studio use. We have a party scene, where whilst the set is being moved and actors are getting into position, the music needs to be loud. Then with the dim feature we can take the cue from the actors to instantly change the music to a lower level, when the scene starts and the characters speak. So easy.” She continues, “Same goes for the cut feature. Phone rings, actor picks it up: sound is cut immediately. No more comedy phone rings after it has been picked up.”
Rianna – who also happens to be the daughter of Audient co-founder, David Dearden – confesses that the idea of iD22 started as an economic decision.
“Initially I was crudely trying to save money, determined to learn how to control the sound myself, to take away the pressure of finding extra funds for a technician.” As a purely self-funded group, Lost Watch is often struggling to raise enough money to make ends meet when making a show. “I’d mentioned to my Dad that it would be good to experiment with a new way of running the tech from on the stage. So he got me iD22 as a gift. Then it turned into something pretty fun and I got to play with the audio interface which was great.”
Having the iD22 has certainly changed how Rianna and her cohorts will approach their next endeavours. “Now we know how to use it, I hope to make full use of iD22 in Lost Watch’s future shows. We don’t like to hide how they have been made, so having the technical aspects of the show out in the open for all the audience to see is really important to us. It’s cool to have good kit.” she says.
Lost Watch will be transferring Goodstock to Greenwich Theatre in London after next month’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival and heading off on a UK tour thereafter. Lost Watch is producing Goodstock in association with Greenwich Theatre and have been supported by the New Diorama Theatre, Pleasance Theatre and the show was developed on the Royal Court and Soho Theatre Young Writers Programmes.