The Elton John/Tim Rice Broadway musical will be the first show performed on the company’s new high-tech, arena-style Centre Stage. The 900-seat house is one of two new theaters in Sandy’s $80 million Mountain America Performing Arts Centre. The show opens with a gala preview Nov. 16, and the run continues through Jan. 20.
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I found this article particularly relatable and interesting as the first show I designed in High school was also Aida! Having worked on the musical, I can attest to its technical complexity, so the idea of performing it in the round in such a small space is equal parts impressive and challenging. "Designing through transitions" is definitely an applicable approach to the show, as many of the songs take place alongside location shifts, as well as underscoring significant story developments. In our production, we employed a unit set with three wagon staircases that could move dynamically during transitions and conjoin to form different locations throughout the play. Although the Hale center is using a more rigging and blocking centric approach to accomodate their unique space, I feel it will produce an impressive and creative rendition of the musical, and I hope to see how it plays out upon opening!
I have been waiting for an article on the Hale Center for a little while now. This was a big project we worked on when I was in London and it is one of the coolest theaters I have ever seen (on paper at least). This article focused mostly on the production that is going on and not as much the theater space, but I’m going to focus on the theater space. As was mentioned, there are a lot of lifts, 13 to be exact. 5 of the lifts also rotate. The ‘bogie’ that they talk about is also and insane piece of engineering. I was fortunate enough to see the center lift and ‘bogie’ in real life and this things are huge. This theater is really incredible and I believe that with the growing technology, all newly build theaters will have some sort of incorporated technology. The real question there is, should we be doing that? Without having to build staging for the entire stage (or at least half because of the slip stage), this theater will never be able to have a square lift, or a smaller turntable, or even a trap door. Sure this technology is incredible, but does it take the modularity out of theaters?
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