automation: Dan macDonald, Richard Smith. Scenic Engineers: phil malins, Gary matthews, .... VENDORS. Lighting Equipment
TheRoyalShakespeare Company At The Park Avenue Armory
PhotoS: Stephanie Berger © 2011
/// b y Natalie R obin
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/// Julius Caesar at Lincoln Center Festival.
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has achieved something stupendous. Recently, it has built not one, but four functional theatres. And when we say built, we mean it quite literally; at least two of the theatres, fully functional and, in fact, tour-able, were built in the RSC workshops alongside scenery and props for innumerable Shakespeare plays. Beginning in 2005, the Royal Shakespeare Company collaborated with Charcoalblue Theatre Consultants to create designs for a temporary theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, a complete renovation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) and two modular theatres. Over a nine-month design period and 13-month build, the temporary Courtyard Theatre was constructed on the Stratford-Upon-Avon campus of the RSC to serve as its primary performance venue during the extensive renovation of the 1,000-seat Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
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Meanwhile, Charcoalblue and the RSC collaborated on the design of another temporary performance space, this one a 700-seat thrust stage to allow the RSC to have a performance presence in London. Unlike other temporary scaffolding theatre structures, this new theatre, named the Roundyard (an amalgamation of the Courtyard, on which it was based, and the Roundhouse, where it was used), was a modular theatre space, which could be put inside Camden Roundhouse, an old London engine shed. Andy Hayles, founder and director of Charcoalblue calls it “recyclable, like the space shuttle or something; you could use it more than once.” The first time the RSC had performed in the Roundhouse, in the early 1990s, they had built a complex structure in the round, blanking out the Roundhouse architecture. The Roundyard, however, was meant to embrace the existing architecture, creating the effect, as Hayles says, “that you walk into a big room, and in the big room is a smaller room.” The RSC took the designs, a series of towers nestled between the existing Roundhouse columns, from the collaboration stage with Charcoalblue into its own workshop, building the entire structure themselves. The structure eventually housed eight plays for eight weeks and was installed in 10 days from 27 trailers. /// TheprogressofthebuildattheParkAvenueArmoryshowsthe room-within-a-roomdesign,withthefinalinteriorshowbelow.
Across The Pond To New York
This room-within-a-room design aesthetic went on to inform both the final design of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Scarlet & Gray Stage for the Lincoln Center Festival (LCF) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York this past summer. The new modular theatre theater would have had to be designed and constructed simultaneously with the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a complete reconstruction within the façade of 1932 building designed by Elisabeth Scott, and had to accommodate pre-existing productions, which had been designed and
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Lincoln Center Festival/ Royal Shakespeare Company Armory CREDITS RSC Re-Lights: Keith Cookson RSC Production Electrician: Tim Owen RSC Lighting Programmer: Lauren Watson LCF Lighting Supervisor: Ben Hagan LCF Production Electrician: Neil McShane Season Chief Electrician: Greg Husinko Season Electricians: Paul Coltoff, Sean Kane Changeover Electricians: Chris Doornbos, James Bolar, Nick Keslake Production Staff Park Avenue Armory Production Coordinator: C. Townsend Olcott II Park Avenue Armory Assistant Production Coordinator: Patricia Kirby PAALightingCoordinator&RoseTheaterLighting Associate: Ben Hagen Venue Lighting Coordinator: Nicholas Houfek
Venue Audio Coordinator: Benjamin Furiga Production Intern: Clare Redden Head Carpenter: Jeffrey Turner Assistant Carpenter: Daniel Gilloon Festival Electrician: Neil McShane Head Electrician: Gregory Husinko Head Properties Person: Jeannine Jones Assistant Properties Person: Steven Wood Head Audio Technician: Stewart Wagner Assistant Audio Technician: Brien Brannigan Head Rigger: Tony Menditto Assistant Rigger: John Martinez Pyrotechnician, Romeo and Juliet: Jeremy Chernick Wardrobe Supervisor: Jimmy Holder Hair & Make-up Supervisor: Ashley Hanson
Sound Coordinator: David Meschter Lighting Coordinator: Aaron Copp Company Manager: Lee Helms RSC Credits Head Of Lighting: Vincent Herbert Head of Technical Design and Construction: Alan Bartlett Design Engineers: Nick Bell, Dave Harris Lighting Design Reproduction: Keith Cookson Lighting: Tim Owen, Lauren Watson Sound Design Reproduction: Sarah Hollyman Sound: Andrew Franks, Craig Garrett Technical Director: Geoff Locker Automation: Dan MacDonald, Richard Smith Scenic Engineers: Phil Malins, Gary Matthews, Chris Pepler, Martin Robinson, Tony Robbins
Lincoln Center Festival Staff
/// King Lear at Lincoln Center Festival.
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/// The Roundyard Theatre
staged for the Courtyard Theatre. And if that weren’t enough, the New York venue had to accommodate an unprecedented sixweek residency, with performances of five of Shakespeare’s plays—As You Like It, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter’s Tale—in repertory for 44 performances. Hayles calls the Scarlet & Gray “a huge, huge undertaking.” Charcoalblue calls it a “flat pack travelling performance space [with a] new, three-tiered, structure to be built inside New York’s historic Park Avenue Armory.” The 55,000sq-ft. Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory has been transformed into a performance space in which a smaller theatre has been dropped into the negative space of the hall. Similarly, the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester England is a glass cylinder suspended inside what was once the largest room in the world. It isn’t a surprise, then, to learn that several of the people involved in the creation of the Scarlet & Gray, the full sized portable theatre built into the Armory, were involved with or worked at the Royal Exchange. Like the Roundyard, the Scarlet & Gray was designed and implemented by Alan Bartlett, Royal Shakespeare Company chief designer and manager of the scenic design and production facility in Stratford. His role was “to make that assessment and devise a way of constructing and building
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/// Royal Shakespeare Theatre
an auditorium on four levels that could be installed in a matter of weeks,” he says. The RST was an active construction site, but the essential shape, site lines, and seating and lighting positions remained the same in the Scarlet & Gray. Because the productions meant to tour in the new portable theatre were designed for the Courtyard, a kind of middle ground had to be found between the Courtyard and its more evolved descendant in the new RST. The lighting and sound would reproduce the systems in the Courtyard and the new permanent theatre. Bartlett says, “In a way, I didn’t have a clean sheet of paper.”
The Scarlet & Gray was also a collaboration between the RSC and the Lincoln Center Festival. Once it had been determined that the new stage would be presented into the Park Avenue Armory in New York City in the Summer of 2011, the two technical teams worked very closely together. Their collaboration involved several trips across the Atlantic, to see both the New York venue and the workshop and pre-existing Roundyard in the UK. The biggest challenge facing the RSC and Lincoln Center teams was designing a structure that could be erected in two to two-and-a-half weeks. The structure and productions would fill
/// As You Like It at Lincoln Center Festival
“It is unprecedented really for a theatre company to build its own theatre in its own workshop.” Andy Hayles, Director, Charcoalblue Theatre Consultants
four sea containers, which would have been prohibitively expensive to load, store, and ship using rental containers, as is common practice. In addition to the cost question was the complicated issue of the schedule of delivery to the Armory, which would have been dictated in part by the container rental company. Bartlett conceived of the idea to buy 34 of the necessary 36 containers (leaving only 12 to be rented). This reduced the pressure on the loading and unloading time and the rental cost, and provided a huge unexpected cost savings in the Armory. Hayles explains that the RSC “created a sub-stage space by lifting the auditorium up in the air” much deeper than had been originally hoped for, as well as support spaces for set and costume storage, dressing rooms, and even a yoga studio. The modular theatre became
a building on top of the containers, which Hayles considers “a fantastic piece of work.” Unlike the Courtyard, with about 3' of space under the stage, or the Roundyard with only a little more, the Scarlet & Gray stage has about 15' below the stage floor. Even with this ingenious plan, there were about 60 trailer movements into the building during load-in. In addition to those shipped from the UK were all of the containers holding the locally sourced equipment, including lighting, sound, video, tables, chairs, and soft goods. The structure, now awaiting further touring options back in Stratford, is compliant with both New York and UK building codes, though Bartlett acknowledges that the productions “pushed the boundaries” of New York fire code, having worked closely with the fire marshals to recreate the pyro-
technic heavy British productions. Romeo and Juliet , in particular, was stunning in its use of fire, with torches and explosions just feet from the audience. Bartlett says they experienced some surprises, though. When the RSC started communications with Lincoln Center and the Armory in 2009, the floor had been quite badly damaged. Immediately before the RSC arrived, however, the Armory started refurbishing the floor and Bartlett says his “heart sunk slightly.” Previously, they hadn’t had to worry. “At least we aren’t going to wreck someone’s beautiful floor,” Bartlett says he had thought. On the up side, structural work on the Armory had changed the possible load on the roof from about six tons to about thirty-three33. “By the time we were completing our design, we could support some from above, instead of the original idea of supporting the entire structure from the ground,” says Bartlett. The team from the RSC collaborated closely with the Lincoln Center staff, including Lincoln Center Festival production manager Paul King and Park Avenue Armory production coordinator C. Townsend Olcott II, to work through the American union agreements. The team worked shorter days in New York than that had in the Roundhouse in London, with multiple departments overlapping instead of being segregated into shifts. There was slightly more time for the load-in to accommodate these differences, as well as the added layer of scenery in the second balcony, which obviously increased the complexity of assembling the structure. The RSC team relied heavily on the Lincoln Center staff for emergency exit placement, building code references, and safety precautions. But given the laws in the UK, the reworking turned out to be relatively straightforward. Olcott says that there was “quite a good synergy between the IA [IATSE Local One] crew and the UK crew,” helped by the fact that the RSC brought two members of each department who really LIVEDESIGNONLINE.COM
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/// AWinter’sTaleatLincoln Center Festival
Partial Equipment List Vendors Lighting Equipment: PRG SoundEquipment:AudioProduction Services ProjectionEquipment:NewCityVideo & Staging Lighting 4 Strand 520i Console (one backup) 2 Strand Remote PC 8 Strand SN110R DMX Node 12 DMX Splitter 480 ETC Sensor+ 2.4kW Dimmer 24 ETC Sensor+ 6kW 240V Dimmer 1 VL Mod Rack 6-Way 96 Way 208V Power Rack 28 Vari-Lite VL1000TS 21 Vari-Lite VL1000AT 6 Vari-Lite VL5 Arc 11 Martin Professional TW1 80V 4 Martin Professional Mac III 2 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidal 10° 35 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidal 19° 88 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidal 26° 5 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidal 36° 2 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidal 50° 2 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidal 70° 56 ETC Source Four PAR 1 Robert Juliat D'Artagnan 2.5kW MSR 25-40 Profile 15 PAR64VNSP 22 PAR64NSP 59 PAR64MFL 10 PAR64WFL
5 5kW Fresnel 1 Arri 2.5kW HMI Fresnel 8 Arri 2kW Fresnel 4 James Thomas Molefay 3-Cell 2 James Thomas Molefay 2-Cell 20 Mini-10 Floods 105 Birdies 89 Wybron Coloram 2 Scroller 120 Custom House Light Fittings 240m xLED Step lighting 12 Flown Moroccan Lamps 1 Flown Globe Lamp 5' Fluorescent Fittings on dropping scenic truss 4 Flown 1,000W High Bay Lanterns 1 Practical Desk Lamps and Radio Dimming 5 Svoboda 9-cell 240V Light Curtains 2 Chandeliers 6 1kW Floods on flown scenic truss 1 Outside Light
knew the shows. In addition, onsite were 15 members of the RSC workshop who had worked on the actual construction of the theatre. Only the stairs and lifts had been built outside the RSC workshop, and the Lincoln Center staff had visited the UK to observe the process of installing the Roundyard in the Camden Roundhouse. Though there is never enough preparation time,
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16 PAR64 in Rain Truss 2 Candelabra 2 Custom 120 Lamp MR16 Battens in Lightbox 10 Martin Professional Atomic 3000 Strobe 2 MDG Atmosphere Hazer 3 Look Solutions Viper NT Smoke Machine 1 Look Solutions Power Tiny Smoke Machine 1 Smoke Factory Spaceball Smoke Machine 2 Le Maitre Chameleon Flame Projector Video 1 High End Systems Wholehog Full Boar 2 SAMSC Design Catalyst Media Server 3 Matrox TripleHead2Go 10 Panasonic PT-D5700U Projector 10 Netcom 113 Ethernet Serial Box
Olcott gives credit where credit is due: “They built a building,” he says. In addition to the complicated design and creation of the structure itself, the Scarlet & Gray had to be outfitted for remounts of the original RSC productions. Vince Herbert, head of lighting for the RSC, was responsible for lighting and video systems inside the new theatre. He
Sound 1 DiGiCo D5T Console 1 Yamaha DME64N Digital Mixing Engine 4 Yamaha MY8-ADDA96 Card Yamaha DME Designer Software 65 d&b audiotechnik EO Speaker 10 Meyer Sound CQ-1 Speaker 14 Meyer UPM-1P Speaker 4 Meyer Sound 600-HP Speaker 6 Meyer Sound UPJ-1P Speaker 2 Meyer Sound UMS-1P Speaker 4 Meyer Sound UPA-2P Speaker 4 Meyer Sound USW-1P Speaker 7 Meyer Sound UPA-1P Speaker 1 Meyer Sound MM-4 Speaker 1 Meyer Sound MM-4CEU Controller 48 JBL Control 1 Speaker 1 JBL Control 23 Speaker 8 Fostex Self Powered Monitor Speaker 1LexiconPCM91DigitalReverberator 1 Lexicon PCM 81 Digital Signal Effects Processor 1 Yamaha SPX2000 Multi-Effects Processor Various Sennheiser, Shure, ElectroVoice, AKG, Schoep, Neuman, and Beyerdynamic Microphones CommunicationsfromClear-Comand RTS Backstage Tannoy Speaker System
heads a large lighting staff in Stratford: 22 department members, including three video technicians. Everything in the Scarlet & Gray had to be as much like the original system as possible, including the use of a Strand 520 console, though the RSC has since chosen an MA Lighting grandMA 2 for the RST. This was meant to be a direct transfer of the original rig, including a real
attempt to recreate exactly the lighting positions and angles. Herbert says that the adaptation was actually relatively easy. “Everything was what we would have had in terms of equipment,” he says, adding that this made the fast technical rehearsal process (about one day per show) possible. The video ran through an SAMSC Design Catalyst media server and, says Herbert, “was treated as a lighting tool” by the RSC artistic teams. Depending on the production, lights were refocused and projectors hung or struck and every production had a new floor. Designer Keith Cookson relit the productions with the lighting team of Tim Owen and Lauren Watson. The sound design was recreated by Andrew Franks with Craig Garratt and Sarah Hollyman. “Nothing really went wrong, [which was good since] there was no plan B,” says Herbert. The lighting vendor
was PRG, and the sound vendor was Simon Nathan of Audio Production Services.
The Walk-In
The transition from the street to the lobby at the Armory is always a remarkable experience. Like stepping into another time, the lobby, with its quiet carpeted halls and dark wood paneling, is a pleasant surprise from the bustle of the street. And then, as Hayles says, “You come into Drill Hall and experience surprise, and then you walk into another room and then another surprise. You are in a perfect room inside another space. You can’t even imagine that a taxi cab is driving past the building. You can’t even remember whether you are off the floor or not. It must be like what it is to be in space, and they suddenly turn the gravity off.” The room-inside-a-room used the vast
space of the Drill Hall as a space of transition, “divorced from the outside environment,” says Bartlett. Unlike other designs in the huge room, which emphasize its size and scope, the RSC’s theatre left the audience with an experience of the space, the distance between the walls of the theatre and the interior walls of the Armory, as in an airplane hanger or shipyard. The structure was positioned, Bartlett describes, so that when you entered, you could see the shape of the Armory around it, but you never had to walk too far to any staircase. Hayles likens the theatre to the keep of a castle or a “pilgrimage in a microcosm” as the audience members were invited to travel through other layers of space to arrive at the secret interior space “where the important stuff happens.” And once the audience was inside the theatre proper, the Drill Hall, the Armory, and the city disappeared.
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