FLOWERS FOR MRS. HARRIS by Rachel Wagstaff and Richard Taylor — November 2025

Directed by Shamus, Scenic Design by Ethan Vettese, Costume Design by Angela Zhang, Lighting Design by Lena Broach

Role: Sound designer

Sound Team: Irene Wang (Asst. Designer), Xiaorong Yin (A1), Rachael DeBrahl (Engineer), Sebastian Sachs (Asst. Engineer)

Scroll down for production photos!

System Design & Content

This show was programmed and mixed on a Yamaha QL5 with playback run through QLab 5.
The 6-piece orchestra was mic’d with various wired microphones, including two DPA4099’s (cello, sax), an EV RE20 (upright bass), an MD421 (flute), and SM-57 (clarinet), all fed to the console through a Rio1608-D.
- The orchestra was also provided with AVIOM A360 Personal Mixers for in-ear monitoring.
The cast of 10 were mic’d with Countryman B3’s on custom ear rigs and Shure ULX transmitters. The system included two hot spares and double mic’ing for the three leading roles.
- In this hat heavy period show, some of the actor’s RF signal was double fed into two inputs via Dante patching so there could be a separate EQ profile for when they were and were not wearing their hats.
The loudspeaker configuration consisted of 12 Martin CDD-Live8’s, 3 Martin CDD-Live12’s, and two Martin SXP118 subwoofers to accommodate the scattered in-the-round orchestra seating and mezzanine, plus center actor fold back.
My QLab file consisted of 15 cue outs associated with each loudspeaker, plus a click feed sent only to the Orchestra through the Aviom system (though we ended up not needing the metronome in the end).
The content design for this show was entirely world-based and very minimal. Each cue was panned to specific loudspeakers to create a spacial design that either added ambience or informed the audience of what more figurative staging and visuals were meant to signal (ie. door bells where there are no doors, Mrs. Harris’ plane taking flight, etc.).
- As a content focused designer, it was very refreshing and new to be able to step away from content-heavy designing and focus on creating the cleanest, most transparent reinforcement possible.