Mercersburg Academy Burgin Center for the Arts

Overview

A pair of theatres are at the heart of a new $16.5M, 65,500-SF arts center serving Mercersburg Academy, a 430-student college preparatory boarding school. The larger 600-seat multipurpose Simon Theatre features a fully rigged fly tower and an adjacent scene shop. The smaller 150-seat Hale Studio Theatre is a black box where the school’s Stony Batter Players mount experimental productions. Other spaces include an instrumental rehearsal room/recital hall, a choral rehearsal room, dance studios, art studios, music teaching studios, and a radio broadcast facility.

Acoustic design centered on the larger theatre and music spaces. The instrumental rehearsal room/recital hall and the choral rehearsal room incorporate adjustable acoustics elements in the form of manually retractable heavy velour curtains, a cost-effective yet flexible means of controlling reverberation. The facility also includes a great deal of special sound isolating construction carefully designed to be sensitive to the project’s limited budget.