Nathan E Adam
Project · Mansion Theater, Branson

Cathy Rigby is Peter Pan

Recorded and mixed the music and orchestra for the Branson staging of the show Cathy Rigby played, on and off, for the better part of thirty years.

Playbill artwork for Cathy Rigby is Peter Pan
The production’s own promotional artwork. Not my image.

The show

Cathy Rigby — an Olympic gymnast before she was an actress, which is why she could fly the way she flew — played Peter Pan on and off from 1974 into the 2010s, picking up a Tony nomination for it. The production came to the Mansion Theater in Branson, Missouri, and I recorded and mixed the music and the orchestra for it.

What theatre audio asks for

Recording an orchestra for a stage production is a different problem from recording one for a record. A record gets made once and then sits still. A theatre score has to survive being played back into a room full of people, night after night, underneath performers who are moving — and in this show, flying — while a stage manager keeps the whole thing on cue.

It has to sound like an orchestra in that room, at that volume, every night, with nobody in the audience ever thinking about where the sound is coming from. That is the entire job.

Related

The other Branson credit is Presleys’ Country Jubilee.