I've got a job coming up at work. It's a student production of the Vagina Monologues, and it's being held in one of our auditoriums. We use it 5 days a week for lectures, and the audio system is set up specifically for that purpose with 2 wireless lavs, and 2 wireless hand helds in house, and a handful of aux mic inputs on the stage.

For the most part there will only be 1 or 2 people on stage at one time, so a well disguised lav should take care of it. However, there are a few parts where there are 4,5, or 6 people on stage all with speaking parts, and I just don't have the mics to lav all of them. I've got 3 additional lavs, but then I'd have to have the receivers up at the stage. I've got a handful of other mics (cardiods, shotguns, PZMs) but given that I've never miked theater before I'm not sure what the best way to approach it is.

Thoughts?

I never knew vaginas needed to be miced.

Uh, it's spelled miKing.

At first I thought this thread as about letting a bunch of mice loose in theater.

You should learn how to spell something before accepting a job doing it.

I always thought it was miKing. I've had problems in the past saying "we should mike mike." Then again, in that case, it'd be "mic mike" ?

I tried it both ways. Neither one of them looked right. I went with the one that made most sense considering there's no actual K in "miCrophone." Oh well.

Ive done these types of things many times, basically whats gonna happen is everyone is going to show up, do a last minute rehearsal, then and expect to get their own wireless microphone a couple minutes before the show. If they feel inclined to actually ask for one the will just say "I need a microphone" without specifying wired or wireless. And then everything is going to get set back till you properly explain to them that its not an option.
How the whole performance is going to be miked depends on the performance itself, and no one knows that better then the performers, so its really their responsibility to tell you way before hand what it is they are going to need mic wise. Such factors to take in consideration would be where everyone is going to be standing at a given time and props on stage which would be good places to hide mics. Or maybe even establish certain cues as to when they can trade off mics without being noticed. Its a pain in the ass on their part, but its either that or they can hire someone else who has the right amount of mics that they need to take over and make the performance go over more smoothly. People like to take the sound guys/ sound equipment for granted not realizing they get what they pay for, and when they pay less they gotta work harder.

Hooray, a real response.

Yeah I've actually worked it out with them so that I'll be settling the mic situation during one of their final rehearsals. That'll hopefully avoid the last minute clusterfuck action. What I was more curious about was if I should set up a couple cardioid mics in front of the stage and hope it picks up the large group, or maybe hide a couple PZMs on stage.

i have seen many people use a pzm attached to some sort of sound board suspended up over head.

Just bring a tape-loop that says "ugly dyke cunts" and play it over and over throughout the performance.