Let's stop here just for a moment to mention that this is

our dedication wall which mentions that we were open on April 20th 1969,

which is now 46 years ago.

We're going to pop into the Studio Theater which is our smallest one.

Oh, so the whole thing is the stage?

Yes, The whole thing.

Oh wow.

The Studio Theater is a black box theater so you're

actually seeing it with stuff in it right now,

but all of these things could be removed, this could be-.

Like the seats can be taken out here.

All the seats are in seating banks that could come down to just the bare walls.

So yeah, it could all be completely stripped down to be a completely empty room,

which gives us that flexibility to make

an experimental space for any different type of performance that you would want.

So we do theater in here, we do dance,

We'll have music shows quite frequently and we do all different set ups.

So right now we're in what we call stadium style,

where we have seats on each side and the stage is

the whole middle, all the way end to end.

We can do a full round,

we can put seating on all four sides,

and the stage is just the middle and any combination between these three sides, one side,

where more of a typical proscenium look,

where all the seating is over here and then the stage is over there,

well look up and there's a full grid above our head,

and you can actually see the worklights around you can see up there pretty well.

That full grid is a huge deal for this room,

because you can put lights anywhere you want,

you can see they've got different parts of the set hanging from this.

They could put curtains,

which you can see we've got curtains across the back there.

It gives you so much flexibility when you're not limited on where your lights go,

where your sets go, in any of those kinds of things.

That grid is a really important part of this.

Another really important part,

is access and exits from each corner.

So this room actually has a room underneath it,

that all four corners have a stairwell that go to that room,

and so actors could exit out of that corner and re-enter in that corner,

that's why those curtains are there they're blocking

a little stairwell that takes you downstairs.

So, again the functionality of how do you get

from one corner to the next and there's also stuff stored down there,

extra props things like that they might need when they're in the space,

so not only is it flexible and experimental,

but it's very functional of a room for that.

And I imagine the balcony gets used too.

That's again part of you know with the,

It's kind of a gallery or gally.

We'll hang some lights on those bars.

There are times where they can incorporate it into the set.

There was one show not long ago where they,

the set was on this side and there was seating over here

and they did a stairwell that went up in that kind of created like upstairs apartment,

you know gave the actors somewhere to go,

but again that connects to that back stairwell so it's kind of an exit.

An actor exited out there at the end of the scene.

They aren't you know stuck having to come back to the house,

they can use the little stairwell in the corner and get out.

All right. So just to kind of orient ourselves to what just happened.

So more up on the lobby we're actually at level

five of the building and then now we're on what's called level two,

our production level, what's nice with the way they designed this is that,

on this level, we're at the stage level for every theater except for the studios.

The studios' the only one that seats entirely up on level five.

Now that we're here, there are a couple play houses behind us,

the Festival Theater is the big TFT

is all the way down there and Foellinger Great Hall is to the left.

There's a hallway that takes you down that way as well.

Of course, that makes it great that anything gets made in the scene shop,

in the costume shop,

any of that can go to any one of these theaters,

as long as they can make it down these hallways which are usually pretty clear and open.

We also have a full loading dock,

you may see that on this end we can bag two whole semis into

this garage if we need to and when we have certain shows like Chicago Symphony,

or we just had the Kodo drummers from Japan they bring like the 10 foot wide drums,

they actually like had to clear

this entire hallway just to get it into the festival theater down there,

so throw back a couple of semis in and we can load in big shows and you know,

as long as it fits in this hallway,

it can fit through those doors and can get in there.

So this is our scene shop and our scene shop is responsible for

building all of the scenery and sets for all of our resident productions.

So that's schools, lyrics theater,

is the opera department, school of dance if they need it and school of theater.

So mostly, opera and theater need the the most stuff built for them.

They can be anywhere from 17 to 20 productions per year.

So as soon as they know the season for the following year,

they start building for that.

And so they're building year round,

as soon as they have a set built,

they're either going to move it into the theater that it's supposed to be used for

or they'll store it if they have a little bit of time until that show actually comes up,

and they'll do what they call loading where they grab all that stuff,

load it in, build the whole set,

do those last hall paint like we all saw up in the studio,

do the touch ups and things,

then the actors will get to use it for a couple of

weeks and then it breaks down and moves up for the next show.

And all the pieces,

many of the pieces get reused.

Some of them get reused. We have kind of a balance there,

where we like to reuse just to not be wasteful.

We also have an educational mission-

That's true of building a scratch. Sure.

So we want to, there are certain things like floors and walls you know it can be reused.

You know you build a flat once you can build a bunch,

when we build the platform once what we call a floor piece.

You can reuse those kinds of things in,

or you to get learn it once and you're good to go,

but a lot of the more unique things like it's nice tree-.

Like that curved stairway.

That stairway right?

There are lot of things you see out here,

you know are going to be unique to a show so they want to be

able to get you the opportunity to design those,

build those, work in the different materials,

work the classes, So yeah,

there's some we reuse, some we don't. But-

And that's a very realistic tree. Can we go closer?

The green, there is no way the leaves are that green.

But I mean I could see it's probably a real branch and then they glue,

they glue on the leaves.

Wow. Dedication. We've lots of undergrads, right?

Oh yeah. Lots of grads and undergrads do a lot of designing in

the wood shops and we'll see some of these

in action when we pop into the wood set over there.

Just a real quick show you what's capable in this space.

We have a full wood shop at that end,

so larger wood for cutting panels, things like that.

This Big machine you see on the left, is a CNC router.

It's a computer controlled router that can do all the fancy,

like edging and creating things and cutting and lettering and stuff like that.

So pretty much put it in a computer or cut it out of wood for you.

Then we're standing here more of the assembly area,

which you can see kind of shifts into the painting area as well

where the floor turns into paint splatters,

and so assembly, all that kind of happens here.

In the far end we have a welding area,

so they can weld and steel.

You can see some of these Steel structures.

Those are little horses here.

Oh yeah, those platforms are like steel based platforms.

So they use those sometimes they actually end up

being lighter than doing a full wood construction.

That gives us a couple of different options to work with.

Its kind of really neat. Features of this space,

it has its own ventilations,

the air actually swaps out about up to seven times an hour in here,

so this whole room is constantly filtered for safety,

cleanliness is all those kinds of things.

And then there's this really cool paint frame on this wall.

You can see they actually did do some paintings on those,

they cut off the canvas but

you can actually stretch a full canvas on this entire paint frame here,

you can do like a backdrop and what's cool about it is

the widget controls you can see up on the top there's a few wires.

The frame itself goes up and down you can see this little hole right here

on the lawn and

so the frame will go up and down so the artist doesn't have to go up down

the ladder or use a scaffold or anything like that.

So actually, it moves to the artists.

There's a little crank for it down the end over there.

Something I do like to mention while we are all in here,

it's the best place to illustrate,

is that we're talking about we have four different theaters,

we've got a scene shop,

we've got people loading in,

you know different things happening all over,

we want to be able to isolate each one of those spaces and theres

a few ways that they isolated these theaters that are really important.

The first is that we're on three foundations.

The building is on a north foundation that has the Playhouse and the studio,

a middle foundation that just the Great Hall sits on,

and then a south foundation that the Festival Theater sits on.

And we'll see this kind of a line on the floor as we walk our way down the hallway.

But another part which if you look behind you here,

if you see the way there is

the kind of square bricks and then there's the support pillar.

Then there's a little bit like cork in

between there and you can also see that above that exit sign,

kind of where that red pipe is.

There's some cork in between there as well.

The beam is the actual structural part,

the brick is not structural.

It's just there to fill in the wall.

And by having those different materials, the poured concrete,

the bricked concrete and the caulk in between and there's

cork and things like that used as well,

it makes it that sound won't travel through the solid substances as well.

So you can be working in

the scene shop while there's a show going on in the playhouse Theater.

Even the Playhouse seating comes right up to

the back corner of that loft that you see right up there.

So that sound won't get through there because of the different densities of materials.

There's some, you can kind of see that there's a different paneling on the ceiling,

it's kind of a multi density-.

So you can be hammering in here and they can be in

the middle of a real soft scene and they won't even notice.

Sawing, hammering welding whatever they need to down

here and that noise won't bleed out into even,

like the studio's just above there the Playhouse is just above there,

we've got you know, Great Hall with you know long quiet pauses and music just up

the hall here and as long as the doors are all

closed properly none of that sound will get from space to space.

Wow.

We do also prop shop which is

just mostly has a lot of the same tools but it's mostly hand tools.

Big difference for those who do not fear types,

anything that is a set or scenery is anything that stays,

pretty much put, whereas a prop is I think an actor would pick up or walk around.

And then there's, we have an upholstery shop,

we can redo some chairs.

You see there's some chair out here probably got a little bit of

upholstery treatment out here as well.

But again gives us that flexibility we can redo some couches, chairs things like that.

Upholstery and props can work together a lot because those are both technically props.

They kind of ride the line between sets.

We have our production offices housed down here.

As we're coming up on this side we have a couple of rehearsal rooms.

Now what's really nice about these rehearsal rooms,

we have five of them down here.

We have a orchestra, choral,

dance, drama and opera.

What's really nice about them is that each one

matches the type of theater that show would be in.

So the orchestra and choral rehearsal rooms,

the space is the same size as the great hall stage.

So when they're rehearsing in there, it's the same setup,

when you're sitting next to someone, you're used to hearing them in

your ear they're going to be right there when you're on stage.

Same with the drama, the dance.

One's both match the Playhouse stage and the Opera one matches the Festival stage.

So they can rehearse,

block, tape out, all those things.

So what's also really nice about it,

is it allows us to use our stages more because if we were going to have a school

theatre production rehearsing for six weeks on the Playhouse stage for six weeks,

you can't use that space but instead what we do when they rehearse down here,

where I talked about that loading with the set,

the scenery and sets will be loaded in about two weeks out, they get you know,

four or five days to load it on, build it on, do the touch up painting,

finish it all up and then the actors just start using it only maybe two weeks out.

So it's more like a professional world where you're rehearsing in one space.

You only get the actual stage pretty much when you're ready to open you know.

You know maybe a week out you get a couple of dress rehearsals you're almost

in costume already by the time you can get on that stage.

You get used to it and then you're opening up already so it's a very quick turn around,

makes it more professional.

It's good for us to educate our students that way.

But it's also good for us to have

the space open so we can do more touring groups come through.

So this is our costumes shop.

They're also responsible for everything the scene shop is,

so all the, anything dance, theater,

opera that they need about 17 to 20 productions a year that they're working on,

you see they're working hard at it right now.

It all starts with you know,

on this wall we've got the designs so you can see

all the drawings and designs that come from the costume designers themselves.

And then you know they'll go through and we have

about 50,000 costume pieces stored in this building.

From everything, you know every type of

piece from hats to shoes and everything in between.

And they'll start by you know going to see if they

have something that matches that design.

Do they need to alter it a little, do they need to purchase something?

And that's what everybody is working on right now.

They'll figure out what they need to make,

they'll start working on them and then they'll have it ready when the show comes up.

And you see in that back corner there they've got

the whole kind of racks that will fill up for each production,

and those are nice because they're on wheels and that way once that rack is filled up and

got all the costumes they just roll it right to

the dressing room and ready to go for that show.

So again using that multi-purpose space because they

don't have to store that stuff in the dressing room they wait till the day of,

get it in there and then they can be ready for their performance.

Fascinating.

And they're also in charge of all the maintenance and care in here so all the washing,

the repairs, if things get damaged during

rehearsals or during the production, all come back here.

They do all the fixing up for all that kind of stuff.

So a lot of work goes into taking care of all these costumes and then maintaining

our own costume inventory which we actually will rent out for groups as well.

So if a high school or a community college is doing a production,

they can rent from us as a costume rental house.

This is backstage.

We're on the Tryon festival theater right now.

This one is our second largest.

It seats almost a thousand it's about 970 in seats.

But you'll see the front in just a moment,

but this is what the backstage looks like and we're

very fortunate to have a really big back stage.

Not all theaters have this much room back here.

The actual playing area is about 40 by

40 foot area which is pretty much built up on the set right now.

You can see the kind of nice great stage,

you can see everything really well.

If you look out, it's kind of hard to stare into

some lights might be easier behind the curtain over here.

Right. Right. You can see.

It's over 90 feet from where we're standing

stage level until we actually hit the ceiling all the way up there.

You can see the cycle around which is this white curtain on the back here.

You can kind of see how it goes all the way to the top,

that's what all the way up curtain would look like you know there,

the reason you need that full height is because anything that would be able to block

the whole stage like a backdrop or

a curtain has to be able to entirely disappear above there.

So if we have a you know 25 foot opening in the front,

we've got to have least 50 feet but then on top of that,

you got all the mechanics on top,

you've got all the pulleys and ropes and the bars fixed on top as

well so that's where you get

that whole 90 feet of height from where we're at.

Untill you get all the way up to the very top of there.

You can see they get used for everything from light equipment, to curtains,

to some of the set parts are kind of,

you know, locked in that way to make them more sturdy.

We've got curtains down the sides here, so that,

that fly system is extremely integral to,

you know the whole layout of the stage.

You've got a ton of lights on this one too.

You might not realize this.

One of my most-- the parts I enjoy the most watching shows is I used to be a tech person,

is seeing all the lights and sounds in action and you might not realize

just how many lights are being hung,

or how many, you know sound cues there are,

how much goes into you know making this production happen from a technical aspect.

I was saying too about with all the lights,

what's really nice here is that we have dedicated equipment per space.

So all these lights all the speakers everything for this room stays in this room.

It's stored over here or something.

Exactly. So these bars are usually completely filled up.

Now they're all out here and being in use.

But that again allows us to be able to do multiple shows on the same night.

So this has the most amazing acoustics right?

It does. Yes so we haven't talked as much about acoustics till now.

We weren't able to pop in to the other houses but each one of our theaters were

actually designed for the acoustics for that type of performance.

So this one was designed for choral symphony music performances.

You can hear, as my voice carries throughout

here it's got a really long reverb time in here.

I measure it roughly about two and a half seconds maybe even a

little bit more. And this is all natural.

So this space was built with

the idea that you know anything that will be done in here wouldn't require mics.

It wouldn't require any speakers or any of that.

So they wanted the room to have this very natural sound to it.

So some of the elements that give it that sound,

that kind of start from the front,

work our way towards the back.

We do have a full choral balcony so if we decide we want to see

the chorus up there is 120 extra seats for a chorus.

The stage is built to fit about 150 performers,

musicians and it has a lift on the front

which that first row can actually be removed of seats.

And then you can bring up the stage and I think the largest group

we've had is 180 musicians on stage.

Wow.

Largest was the 180 on stage plus another hundred in the choral balcony so you got

almost 300 performers in here at one point but that's all for them.

The stage itself is got a white oak surface but it's hollow underneath.

And that helps to amplify the performers.

So anything that's touching that surface gets a little more kind of

a boom out having that hollow space underneath it,

which means a lot of instruments kind of come in contact with the ground that way.

I'm going to be working with frost on,

if you touch the walls, you see how it's kind of zig zag.

There's no parallel surfaces.

By not having any parallel surfaces,

the sound is continuously pushed throughout

the room it's sort of bouncing back and forth at any point.

And the surface is a very hard materials,

it's got plaster and hardwood,

is actually an Indiana butternut because Alma Rosé is originally from

Indiana and so she wanted a little something from

her own history to show up in the Great Hall.

But as you can also see

the zig zag is got kind of this this almost like a megaphone shapes.

So it starts narrower, and it gets wider

toward the back of the very end and it hugs in a little bit.

But that again, with all of these, you know,

kind of angled walls it forces the sound to move

throughout the room but still let it carry.

And then as you know it passes over everybody and

the other features that work is the ceiling above us.

You can see it's got kind of that you know,

unique design and shape and that again

helps the sound kind of bounce off in different directions.

There's another request of Alma Rosé.

She wanted a solid ceiling because a lot of music halls will have what they called

Clouds were there's just like a strip of that floating but you can still see past it.

So you'll see the actual roof or you'll see mechanical parts up there.

They didn't like that and she wanted the solid one and so that was actually designed on

a computer which in the mid-sixties was

quite a feat because they weren't very many computers available.

So that was designed using computer,

and it's actually suspended because we're-- when they were building this again,

think about that isolation.

How are we going to keep sound out?

We're in a room right now that has two exterior walls,

an exterior ceiling and an exterior back.

So they had to be able to kind of close that in.

So there they have,

it's about 30 more feet of space

above the suspended ceiling until you hit the real ceiling.

That's because they knew we were going to be in the flight path between

an airport on the south side of town and heading towards Chicago.

So they didn't want these little regional planes buzzing

overhead during the middle of a music concert to bleed in here,

so that extra airspace helps to insulate that.

Then the outer edges, the hallways here just came down to help insulate

the outer walls in the back of the backstage, I'm so sorry,

the front has a backstage and then the back has the actual,

the rest its a plain wood center block you know,

so helps to enclose this whole space and I mentioned it's on

its own foundation as well so it doesn't in get any of

those vibrations from the other theaters or any of that.

And as I recall,

they literally could go down there and drop a pin in here.

Oh absolutely. I've had somebody have

a conversation from on that stage

the back of his house without having to raise your voice.

You can just talk throughout this whole room without a problem.

And you know when there's the person tuning in here plucking that piano,

that one key carries throughout the entire room without any problem whatsoever.

But, on the flip side of that,

it also blends beautifully.

If you have 200 people there you can still hear every instrument.

There's not like dead corners or anything like that.

It's really very clear, very crisp.

One last little element that's kind of neat was that they thought about this,

they knew it's 2,000 seats you want to make sure sounds the

same whether there's people filling the whole hall or not.

So they actually got the thickest upholstery they could.

So that it kind of mirrors people's clothing so that if there was

somebody sitting in the seat or not they absorb the same amount of sound.

And then they fine tuned it,

by having different cushions in

the seats that some of them are porous and some of them are non-porous.

So if an area was a little too echoey,

they would put the porous one there and it would soak up some of that sound.

And when they get it to sound exactly the way they want it,

they put the non-porous so it wouldn't absorb

any more sound then they would just let that sound the same way it is.

This is the Tryon Festival Theatre.

I mentioned before this was you know originally designed for opera.

So it has, you can hear my voice.

It carries but not quite as much as it did in there.

So again is a kind of a good mixture where if you

have spoken parts or anything you really need to hear a little more crisply,

but it still allows the music to carry it throughout.

Actually it's great that we got to see it in the setup right now

because you know we got to see that set from backstage.

You already kind of know what's the difference between the front and the back cabin.

You can see how much is just hidden.

You know, how much goes into that designing of

all those lights and things you saw from backstage.

You don't see anything right now of course because they put a curtain down the back.

You won't see any of that storage anymore either.

So it's really neat to see that combination of them.

We do also, as you can see now we have

a full orchestra pit in the front and there are actually

two lifts so that you can-- there's

second lift that is currently up and then the one that is down.

They both, they go down there and then that creates a pit

for about 80 to 90 performers to be down underneath there.

It connects with a room that goes part way underneath the stage as well.

So it gives them a little more space to work with down there.

Seating is just under a thousand I think it is 970.

But some of the neat features that make these acoustics the way they are they're a

little different from the way that the the Great Hall was,

as we still have that kind of a cone shape where

we're getting a little wider but here we have

all curved walls and so again we're getting that

where there's no parallel surfaces maybe for like you know,

a very tiny bit of it.

But technically these walls are curved to allow

the sound to bounce off and move throughout the room.

Doesn't have quite as much air space so we don't get

that really long reverb time and this is you know pretty much

the true roof we've got some catwalks up there but that's

about all there is to that space above us.

And then there's, yes the way the walls curve back the way the space kind of

curls around the back and it's alive but not too live kind of a room to it.

Well this is really wonderful Nick.

We really appreciate your help and especially the short notice.

How Things Work: Backstage at a Theater

Energy, Environment, and Everyday Life

Meet the Instructors