Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

Making a Prop Tape Player Cueable

Jonathan Cardone

The sound quality of an inexpensive cassette tape player was a key element in a production of Antgone in New York at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Wanting to make a prop tape player sound as realistic as possible without sacrificing cueing or volume control, Sound Designer Kevin Hodgson came up with the idea of putting a wireless receiver in the tape player that the actors would use and transmitting a signal to it from the sound board. The wireless unit we found, the NADY 151 VR, is primarily used as a remote sound pickup for video camcorders. The NADY package contains two parts: a radio transmitter with a small lavalier mic, and a receiver with both line-level and headphone output jacks. I ...