Ocmix

Sound designer Kai Harada
The show is based on the best-selling 2006 graphic memoir by cartoonist
Alison Bechdel, who won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014. She
emerged nationally in the mid-‘80s with the alternative comic strip
Dykes to Watch Out For.
IN THE ROUND?
Fun Home further distinguishes itself on the Great White Way as a musical
staged rather differently—in-the-round Broadway musicals can be
counted on one hand, with fingers likely left over.
Fun Home originated Off Broadway at New York’s Public Theater in
2013, winning a slew of awards. The decision to go from proscenium
staging to in-the-round for Broadway was mainly a
production choice, says sound designer Kai Harada.
Director Sam Gold—who won the 2015 Tony for Direction—realized
that the only way to improve the staging was
to go in-the-round, Harada notes. And the smallish Circle in
the Square Theatre (New York’s legendary 623-seat room in
the basement of a midtown skyscraper) was available.
Harada admits he was, “apprehensive…there’s a reason
there aren’t many musicals in-the-round—it’s really difficult
to do it well!” Having the stage totally surrounded by the audience
meant a complete overhaul.
“It was challenging for all departments, and for the cast,
but the show took an incredible leap forward,” says Harada.
“Now you really feel you’re part of the family, watching Alison’s past
come to life. It is an immersion rather than a presentation.”
In fact, the first few rows surrounding the floor-level stage are intimately
close to the action, a scant few feet away, and there is not an
obstructed sightline in the room, as the action moves all around the big
rectangular stage.
Accordingly, Harada’s sound design worked ambitiously to pull the audience
right into the warped and hectic world of Alison and her funeral-home-running,
décor-obsessed family, by “making the sound system
disappear, so the audience is not listening to the system but to the show.”
Photo: Eric Rudolph