Columbus School for Girls Multi-Use Auditorium

Overview

A new 400-seat theatre is part of a large campus expansion at this private college preparatory school serving girls from pre-K age through 12th grade. The project initially involved planning, programming, and conceptual design for a new performance auditorium for music and theater. After a pause for fundraising, the project resumed to full-scale design and support services during the construction phase. The overall intent for the new space was to achieve a feeling of spaciousness and envelopment. Challenges included coordinating a design to support equal focus on music and theatre.

The auditorium supports both straight drama and musical theatre with as many as 60 cast and crew for the school’s annual spring show. In accommodating theatrical productions, a proscenium was desired for visual masking and wing space for sets and offstage cast. While great for theatre, prosceniums present a challenge for music concerts where performance experiences are optimized when musicians play in the same acoustical volume as the audience—prosceniums interfere with feedback from the audience chamber to the performance platform. This communication is essential for musicians to know that their sound is getting to the audience. Student performers in particular benefit from having a good connection with the audience and from being able to hear other musicians easily.

To enable the space to transform from a theatre to a concert hall, a number of features provide the needed flexibility: an adjustable proscenium, a reconfigurable concert enclosure, and variable sound-absorptive acoustic elements. The final result is a venue that effectively showcases and cultivates both theatrical and musical talent.