CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 22, 2022

Halls of the Halls

ASTC: To the occasional visitor, wandering around a performing arts facility can feel like an exercise in solving a maze. Getting from one space to another is rarely “just through that door.” There are always corridors, vestibules, stairs, ramps, or elevators to be negotiated, all of which are located where they are for good reasons: building codes, accessibility requirements, noise isolation, and standard theatre practice. Theatre consultants are the highest authorities on all aspects of planning for performance facilities, and in particular the specifics of configuring rooms and the connections between rooms.

1 comment:

Phoebe Huggett said...

Even if made to guidelines I have found the backstage theaters are still usually a bit strange, there’s some definite corridor space that is always arranged weirdly around them like the last bit of space on the plan that was needed to fit together. I think interesting to consider is the permanence of a theatre, the shows are not, but the actual building and space within are. Building a theatre is very expensive, and no ones really going to be keen to update a ton of existing infrastructure and sometimes even you can’t, weird decisions from the designers or architects can leave flaws in theatres that are just going to be stuck there for you to deal with and learn to work around, which for me is a strange and wonderful contrast of this as an art form, much more permanent locations being and ever changing and ever new assortment of art.