Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2012 - 39

The stage right fly floor in the Great Hall

photo by loren peter ahles, courtesy of hga architects & engineers

photo by lee choo

The Great Hall of the Valley Performing Arts Center

George Rickey kinetic sculpture Two Up, Two Down was languishing in disrepair in a grove of trees across from the administration building. "Somebody mentioned, 'Would you ever
consider having this sculpture by the building?'" Hill recalled.
"I walked over and thought, Oh, my god! Yes! Fantastic! That's
lucky. How many times do people say, Oh, have a Rickey!" Since
the sculpture's original 1968 site was a reflecting pool, Hill was
excited to see Two Up, Two Down once again towering over a
water feature.

The Great Hall
Patrons enter the VPAC's Great Hall at one of four levels from the
Grand Lobby Atrium via the sweeping Jean and David Fleming
Staircase. Regardless of their point of entry, patrons entering the
1,700-seat hall are visually drawn to the stage by the serpentine
bands of gold-toned anigre wood, which is sustainably plantation
harvested. Hill stressed, "I really felt, and the university agreed,
that I wanted a strong proscenium. I wanted a hall that went
inside-outside so the audience and stage connect. So from day
one, I really wanted those bands of wood coming into the stage."
The portable orchestra shell and the reflected back of the hall
are both covered in expanded stainless steel. "One thing I really
wanted to limit was the number of materials," continued Hill. "I
sometimes think halls can get sloppy with a lot of different materials, and we wanted to keep it to just wood and the stainless
steel. And the stainless steel, of course, comes from the outside

theatre design

& technology

winter

2012

of the building. It's an inside-outside connection."
In addition to the carefully shaped reflecting surfaces,
acoustical contractors McKay Conant Hoover Inc designed
a series of individually controlled absorptive wool serge
drapes which are deployed behind the stainless steel panels
at the rear of the house and hidden in the grid work above
the wood cloud. In a Q&A interview with sound consultant
David Conant, he describes the acoustic design process: "As
we increasingly do for halls of this size, we 'build' from the
architect's drawings a 3D computer model of the hall interior, 'place' a virtual musician or orchestra on stage and let
the computer identify important acoustical parameters of that
specific design. We can also listen to what's termed an auralization of that sound as generated within the computer and
make comparative judgments to inform decisions regarding
adjustments. By this, we can test various reflective (or absorptive) surface finishes, orientations and the like. Because
VPAC required serving an unusually wide spectrum of performance types, this helped confirm our design approach early
on." A copy of the interview is available on the TD&T website
at http://www.usitt.org/tdt/ConantInterview.pdf.
The "tunable" components of the Great Hall include the
portable orchestra shell, a deployable onstage cloud of the serpentine wood panels, and the adjustable wool drapes. Perhaps
the most innovative are the adjustable draperies because of
their individual control and "preset" capabilities. At the second

http://www.usitt.org/tdt/ConantInterview.pdf

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2012