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January 2003: Mayumana
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A high-energy percussion show has emerged from a five-year-long gestation in

Israel and looks set to become an international hit. For its creators and performers

alike, Mayumana is more than just a show, it's a way of life.
"The word Mayumana," declares the impassioned general director Roy Ofer, "is loosely derived from the Hebrew word for 'skilfulness' - it symbolizes what we are about and what went into creating the show. Mayumana is a living, breathing body, a group of people working together, and it's all about good energy. It's based on rhythm, but it's not specifically about percussion, it's about expressing ourselves. After five years of playing in Israel and touring internationally, the word Mayumana has its own meaning there." It is pronounced, incidentally, Maa-you-maanah.
The show was created by Eylon Nuphar and Boaz Berman, and is riveting from start to finish. It opens with the cast seated in a row behind a long table. Upturned white plastic buckets are produced and percussion commences; wheelie bins metamorphose into congas and a brilliantly mimed table-less (and indeed ping-pong ball-less) ping-pong game involves performers flicking small squares of cardboard with their thumbs to produce the 'tock' sound.
The staging is deceptively simple, and constantly changing. A row of four giant, gilded steel oil drums stand upstage, while above them, a scaffold platform provides a raised performance area. Two more tall perforated oil drums upstage to stage left and right, internally lit, look for all the world like giant coal braziers. Raised platforms each side forward of the pros arch host didgeridoo players and mime sequences. Some scenes are conducted in near-total darkness: in a couple of breathtaking minutes a game involving throwing and catching balls is lit solely by the glow of the luminous balls themselves as they zip across the stage, caught in precisely the right places for the stage front microphones to pick up the rhythmic thud of each catch. A perspex tank of water becomes a resonant drum. The cast weave across the stage wearing flourescently coloured flippers on both hands and feet. Music is played on enormous lengths of industrial pipe. And all the while, the insistent rhythms drive it on. There's never a dull moment.
Pre-New Year, Mayumana played to a run of packed houses, twice a night, in Madrid's elegant 900-seat Teatro Nuevo Apollo, its original four-week run extended first by eight weeks, then another four. With a second cast simultaneously performing in Korea and in Israel, a return for the fourth time to Holland will be the next staging post for this energetic show. Dates in North and South America, Asia, France, Italy, Germany and the UK are either scheduled or under discussion. Meanwhile, the original Israeli production continues, four years on, in its own dedicated theatre in Jaffa. There is no language barrier, with little dialogue in the show, and what there is, is translated to the local tongue.
For Madrid (Mayumana returns to Spain after stints last year in Madrid and Barcelona), the technical production has been enhanced with Ampco Pro Rent and Metam Lights, both part of the newly-privatised Ampco/Flashlight Group (see news last issue), brought in to supply audio and lighting systems. But more of that shortly.
Roy Ofer, whose career has embraced musicals and TV and film production, elaborates: "We look for skilled people, people with interesting personalities. We have almost 30 performers and only two of them were percussionists before joining us. But they all have to have superb co-ordination and rhythm and be able catch things very fast. Everyone brings something of themselves to the show. One is a flamenco dancer, one a gymnast, another an actor . . .
"Eylon and Boaz came up with an idea to do a different show based on rhythm. It took eight months to find the right people, working in an abandoned warehouse; there they created a 20-minute show and tested it on friends in Tel Aviv, and during this process Mayumana came into being. Dancers became musicians, gymnasts became drummers, and each one would teach the others their own skills."
The cast's first two major performances saw them truly thrown in at the deep end: "I booked them for an advertising awards ceremony in Israel and they performed for three minutes. Then, as we became closer and I quit my other activities, we did our first-ever overseas public performance in front of 150,000 people by Ceacescu's palace in Budapest. At that point," he laughs, "no-one outside Israel had ever heard of us!"
"We didn't have a lot of budget so we were doing everything ourselves, including the marketing, technical support, production - even putting up posters. Now there are nearly 70 people in the company, but we have maintained our ideals, and we prefer to stay as small as we can." Nearly 450,000 people in Israel have now seen the show: "It appeals to all the family," says Ofer, "three generations come to see it every night.
"We also have a kids' show in Israel which we're now starting to market internationally; we're working strongly in the corporate event market with a special version of Mayumana. The idea is to do things while keeping on enjoying it - we don't just want to become a business. It's not just a show - it's our life! And everything is very hard work, seven days a week, 14 hours a day."
A New Production
For the Ampco/Flashlight Group, this is one of the first international productions since their announcement of a management buyout from former parent group NOB. "We knew of the Ampco/Flashlight Group," says Ofer, "as they're one of the biggest companies in the European market, and through mutual friends we met them and explained the concept.
"After a number of conversations and visits by their people to Israel, we decided that we liked them, trusted them and that they would bring the infrastructure of a big company and a lot of equipment and technical knowledge with them.
"The quality of lighting and sound are very important for Mayumana. It has to be done accurately as the show is completely live - and needs very specific and accurate lighting. There are lots of scenery and props which all have to be in precisely the right place, and everything happens very quickly. It's not a very complicated show, but because our needs on the stage are very exact, it makes it much more demanding in terms of attention to detail.
"We invest most of the money back into the company, and one of the most important things is that the show is constantly evolving and growing. In the last 18 months, 25 minutes of the show itself, along with the sound and the lighting designs, have changed completely.
"We're using moving lights for the first time," he grins. "For a long time people have been telling us, your lighting is very old-fashioned in terms of the set-up, all individual Pars - why not do it with moving lights? Well, we had tried experimenting with various moving lights, but we found the light very cold. We were waiting for a moving light to be developed that would produce a really warm light, because we like the warmth of Par cans - a very warm, theatrical feel."
For them, the answer appeared in late 2001 at LDI. "The Vari*Lite VL1000 is the first good moving light that gives you all the possibilities of a Vari*Lite, but with the warmth of a Par can. So now we're changing more and more over to Vari*Lites, which also makes it easier to set up while raising the artistic level of the show. We've waited a long time for this."
Mayumana's lighting designers, Eyal Tavori and Eylon Nuphar, worked with lighting operator Roy Milo and the Ampco/Metam Lights team on the process of adapting the show for the addition of moving lights, with Metam supplying the entire lighting rig. The Vari*Lite complement is 10 VL1000 and seven VL2402 luminaires, allied to a conventional rig headed by 30 Thomas Par 64s, seven Wybron Coloram 1kW scrollers, four ETC Source Four 36" ellipsoidals, various floods, a Sagitter Digiflash Pro 1500 strobe and two DF50 foggers, all flown from Prolyte trussing.
Sound Design
As with lighting, the sound elements for the Madrid production changed radically, with Ampco Pro Rent's equipment based around their Renkus-Heinz Synco Touring System (RH-STS) PA, with Renkus-Heinz infill and under-balcony loudspeakers.
To cover the often fast-paced action and pin-point it all sonically within a solid stereo sound field, sound designer Amir Schorr opted for a combination of carefully placed condenser microphones in a line along the stage lip, pre-aimed at equally well-positioned cast members, plus a number of local mics for 'specials' such as the didgeridoos.
Sound operator Elad Biran begins: "Most of the work is done by microphones that are spaced to cover the cast from the closest position possible - but the stage is pretty big and they're moving a lot. Down at the front of the stage, eight Sennheiser MHK 416 condenser mics cover most of the stage space, and we have two more hung overhead at the sides to pick up the further extremities of the upper stage. On the scaffold behind are two Schoeps for when they're playing the barrels and the tubes, two mics inside the tubes themselves, another in the centre upstage, plus a few pointing at specific instruments."
The accuracy of Mayumana's stereo soundfield is essential to conveying the illusions of the mime parts. Part of the trick in setting this up is the use of precision delays, with everything delayed from a point at the rear of the performing area. Biran: "Zero point is represented by the row of golden barrels. Everything you hear sounds like it's coming from the stage, yet everything is delayed in the system, creating a pin-point accurate stereo image and perfect phasing."
In the 'ping-pong' scene, where the impact of cardboard bat on invisible ball cracks from the speakers from left to right, you'd assume there's a very alert finger on a sampler button. But no; once again, it's very much live. Biran explains: "For the ping-pong sound effects, those involve riding the microphone faders. The real trick is performed with a piece of cardboard, which is flicked hard by the player's hand, picked up by the Sennheisers - extremely well executed. The only sample is the effect when she's pulling the trigger, and there's playback when the tubes are being played and another guy is on percussion."
The Midas Legend 3000's stereo matrixes, auxiliaries and outputs are used to the full to send the mix into the distributed PA. The main PA takes the six matrixes plus nine aux sends; delays take two more, stage monitoring six and backstage another one.
Stage monitoring is taken care of by a pair of RH-STS stacks that act as both monitors and playback PA speakers, with more sidefill stacks on the scaffold, monitors for the girls playing on the towers and for the twin didgeridoos. The latter are played fully live and miked with AKG C409 clip-on mics, fitted inside the tube. The same technique is used for the perspex water tank with the mic aimed straight at the water, producing a deep, resonant sound when the tank is struck.
The PA itself consists of a flown left and right system of two RH-STS LO (low frequency) cabinets, one RH-STS MH (mid/high) and one Combi (full range) per side; the centre cluster uses a pair each of RH-STS MH and Combi cabinets. On the ground are three RH-STS SUB cabs and a single Combi per side; the front fill/under balcony system comprises eight APR TRC 81/9s and a Renkus-Heinz SR121, more of which provide the balcony delays. All the RH-STS speakers are driven by Crest amplifiers and proprietary Synco loudspeaker controllers. Comments Biran: "It was quite complex and difficult to set up because you can't be in every place all the time in such a large hall. It's much larger than the Tel Aviv production, but essentially the same set-up and same concept."
In the racks are a BSS Soundweb, two Klark Teknik DN7204 delay/EQs, five XTA GQ 600 2x30 graphic equalizers, a Yamaha SPX 990, Lexicon LXP-15 and PCM 91, Drawmer DS201, three dbx 1046 quad comp/limiters, and for playback, three Sony MDS-E12 Minidisc player/recorders and a CDP-D11 CD player. Intercom features two channels of ASL PS278, while the microphone complement is two Crown PCC 160 pressure zone mics, seven Neumann KM184s and KM185s, 10 Sennheiser MKH 416s, four C418s and two wired ME 102Ps, and four each of Shure SM58s, Beta 58As and UHF SM58ß hand-helds. It's all compact and, on the evidence of one's ears, rather perfectly formed.
On the Road
The infectious enthusiasm of Roy Ofer and the whole Mayumana ensemble shine through in this lively production, which has evolved in its five years back home into an international show with high technical and creative standards. Now the show's on the road the word is spreading quickly. Of the countries scheduled or under discussion for the grand tour, only the UK so far remains unbooked. Promoters, now's your chance.
(L&SI)
If you have any comments to make on any of the issues raised here, please e-mail us at news@lsionline.co.uk .





​​NB Mon nom en Israel est Biran, mais il s'agit bien de moi​​​. ​​​​​