Now Hear This: Oregon Shakespeare Festival to use electronic amplification for all outdoor shows this summer

NWCTC has been using using amplification for its summer outdoor shows in Bend, Oregon and will continue their use this year during the expanded tour of Oregon Wine Country in the Willamette Valley for Twelfth Night. For these audiences who perhaps aren’t treated to the abundance of theater that the Ashland crowd enjoys, amplification seems a no-brainer and a huge assistance for competing with the sounds of the parks and found outdoor spaces we perform in (especially when a rumbling thunder storm rolls in just across the lake from our show…). And for the performers, while the microphones can take some getting used to, (where the heck do you put the battery back in your corset? and wow – those kisses sure sound a whole lot juicier…) eventually we have been won over by the relative lack of strain on our voices and ability to use inflection, tone, and volume adjustments in our performances. What are you thoughts on using “sound reinforcement” for theater performances?