For the 85th Strange family reunion, we made history by putting on a family play, based on the First Generation of Freeborn Stranges, all sired by my great grandfather, Jesse Strange and his first wife, Annie, and his second wife, Lucy.
All but one of the rehearsals were virtual. Unfortunately for me, the sound tech, the recorded sounds and music that I’d saved in an audio platform couldn’t be heard by most of the virtual participants.
At the one live rehearsal we had the night before the play, I couldn’t hear the sound coming out of the speakers. Yet, I’d figured out that if I placed the microphone on the left side of the laptop, the sound would come through the shelter’s speakers.
After that late-night rehearsal, I got it in my head that I needed to delete several things on my laptop in order to free up storage space. I have no idea why that activity seemed so urgent at the time, but of course, I did the inevitable.
As soon as I discovered that I’d accidentally deleted the play’s soundtrack, along with emptying the trash–since why would I stop at making merely one mistake around midnight–my mind when into a late-night overdrive.
I shared a hotel room with Mom, who although hard of hearing, could still hear well enough if I attempted to recreate the soundtrack. Most of the tracks were sound effect cues that I played from my phone to record directly into the audio platform on the laptop. Also, there was a song that I had to modify by recording myself whispering the names of the First Freeborn Generation of Stranges.
I relocated to the bathroom since acoustics tend to be better there than in a room. Besides, I escaped the sound of the hotel AC unit, which may have been wonderful to sleep to, but registered as noise pollution for my recordings.
The one good thing about having to redo the play soundtrack was drastically scaling back my ambitions. Prior to our live rehearsal, I’d had various sound cues for different parts of the play such as the first time we saw a certain character, the beginning of scenes and to punctuate dialogue. All of that went out the window.
I only kept a song that two dancers performed to, sound cues that the characters reacted to, music that went along with a poem and part of a song to indicate a dream.
The next evening, no one noticed that I’d redone the soundtrack. We all brought our best to the performance.
One of my cousins, who sat in the front, provided me with hand signals to indicate whether the sound was too loud or not loud enough. Unlike during the live rehearsal, I couldn’t merely place a microphone on the left hand side of my computer.
As a matter of fact, there were three microphones during the performance. One cordless mic that I wouldn’t dare use since I figured the battery would die at any moment since it had been used for the evening program. The other two mics were plugged in, but I couldn’t use one of them because every time I turned it on, it produced ear-piercing feedback distortion.
So, the narrator and I share the one good mic while some of the actors shared the cordless mic since many of them didn’t project loud enough for the entire audience to hear.
A week after the performance, my cousin who’d wrote, directed and starred in the play had a post-performance meeting. We shared a lot of useful feedback. I suggested having a stage manager, turning it into an animation and researching how much it costs to use the copyrighted song that was used throughout the play.
When another cousin suggested moving the play from its original location to a local church or some other enclosed place, several of us pointed out the power of doing the play at our family reunion shelter again since houses and our family church that the characters refer to can literally be seen from the shelter. Those were powerful moments that brought a smile to the audience’s faces.
Another cousin suggested that our family history could be a mini series, especially if we were going to do an animation.
Of course, many assumed that I would edit the video since I’d just shared the link with family members of my Ghana vacation documentary. Although that project turned out very well, I wasn’t trying to add more projects to the docket since I have a total of 15 hours of yoga instruction videos that I need to complete.
Once I thought about it, there was not too much I needed to do since only two people recorded the play. The only thing that I’d do, if possible, is intercut between the two views, add the sound cues that weren’t possible to play during the performance and add a title and end credits.
One thing we’re all optimistically waiting for is the writer-director to receive funding. As they say, “Have money, will travel.”
In this case, this creative project will go much further with more funding. The leif motif of the play was: when we all put our hands to the plow, there’s nothing that we cannot accomplish. Hopefully, this endeavor will be another example of that.
