Flexibility is a key element in the high school auditorium-cum-performing-arts center at Taconic Hills Central School, in Craryville, NY. Designed by Rhinebeck Architecture of Rhinebeck, NY, this state-of-the-art room has a stage with a dual personality: it both faces a 1,000-seat proscenium theatre, and can open toward an outdoor amphitheatre in the back, allowing one venue to function as two. “This adds a great dynamic for the community,” says project designer Donald Pulver of Rhinebeck Architecture, citing references for outdoor spaces from the Greeks to Alvar Alto.

Pulver and Rhinebeck Architecture's principal-in-charge J. Louis Turpin collaborated with theatre consultants Fisher Dachs Associates Inc. of New York City and acousticians Acentech Incorporated of Cambridge, MA, to create an auditorium in keeping with the contemporary nature of a new $50-million school, which opened on the eve of the new millennium. The goal was to design a space with professional lighting and acoustics that would allow for performances of dance, music, and theatre, as well as serve as a teaching facility for the students.

“The Taconic Hills school is located two-and-a-half hours north of New York City, in an area that's large in area but small in population,” notes Turpin. “Nowhere in their geographic area is there a large city, just a series of small hamlets, so the school plays an important role as a town hall and community center for many communities.” For the overall design of the building, the architects were asked to include elements of a 1920s or WPA-era school that was closed to open the new one. “It recalls the days when schoolhouses were topped with cupolas. But the theatre reaches into the 21st century as far as possible,” Turpin adds.

“We wanted to make the space as intimate as possible,” says Pulver. “There is a steep rake to the balcony and we extended it very far forward. Thanks to the quality of the acoustics and the good sightlines, you don't feel as if you are in a cavernous space.” There are 748 seats on the orchestra level, 265 in the balcony.

The architects used a combination of exciting forms and vibrant colors in the room, with a ceiling feature of radiating “fingers” stretching out from the proscenium. “It is an architectural gesture as to how the sound and the performance is directed out across the audience,” Pulver notes. “Doing so reinforces the acoustic shaping of the room aesthetically.”

The ceiling itself is a dark teal blue, one of the main colors in the design scheme, and is stepped, or tiered, to help acoustically avoid dead spots in the balcony. As this theatre is in a school where catwalks would be considered a danger, there is a motorized front-of-house truss instead, adding more of a Broadway look to the room. House lights include both recessed downlights in the ceiling and custom-designed sconces on the walls. These are controlled by an ETC Unison architectural system, which is separate from the theatrical lighting control. The Unison system has both a master control panel and remote entry stations so that the house lights can be turned on without running up to the lighting booth.

The teal ceiling is taken from the school's own color scheme, which uses the teal in the secondary school portion of the building, and magenta for the primary classes. The auditorium, in the center of the building and used by all of the students, combines the two colors. Additional color comes from the architectural-grade concrete block walls, which are painted in Radiant Rock Rustique (red), Charcoal, and Mesa Buff (earth tone) by Sherwin Williams. The rear wall is faced with acoustic panels by Capaul Corporation (fabric over fiberboard) in teal and magenta, and these colors are also picked up in the woven fabric on the seats and in the Lees “Paradise” carpet in the aisles.

Opening the rear of the stage toward the small outdoor amphitheatre is a concept Pulver and FDA hope to repeat at several other performing-arts centers currently on the drawing boards, including Moses Brown School in Providence, RI. “Amphitheatres have been around since the beginning of time,” he explains. “I like the idea of an amphitheatre in conjunction with a performing arts center. Every chance we get to have one, we will.” In this case, a giant garage-style Wayne Dalton Thermospan Insulated Sectional Door, measuring 24' tall by 33' wide, opens overhead via manual or automatic control as the interface between the stage and landscaped seating behind the theatre. “This is a sunken area with grassy tiers supported by concrete walls,” Pulver adds.

The exterior wall of the theatre serves as the proscenium when the stage is open to the back, and a full-width traveler can be hung for use as a curtain. There is also a 14'-deep apron, or concrete slab with cast stone facing, which thrusts the stage forward toward the amphitheatre, and can be used alone as an outdoor performance platform.

The full stage measures 23' deep and 62' wide, with a 40' proscenium opening. The stage floor is wood with no traps. There is a full stage tower that allows for flying of scenic elements. The rigging, provided by Syracuse Scenery & Stage Lighting, includes 22 counterweight rigging sets (two with 850lb capacity; 20 with 640lb capacity); three 14'-long motorized lineshaft winches with 700lb capacity, and one 1,500lb-capacity mobile capstan winch.

“There is one working lineset every foot,” explains Robert Campbell, project manager for Fisher Dachs Associates. “We approached this project like a prep school or small college. This school is developing music and drama programs, and they want to teach stage technology, so the theatre has to be adaptable.” With this in mind, the stage is flanked by ample shop and storage space, plus a green room, adequate dressing rooms, and storage for costumes, props and AV equipment.

Campbell says they refer to it as a “high-tech, low-tech venue. High tech in that it is state of the art by today's standards, and low tech in that it has to be easy to use. You don't have to be a computer major or rocket scientist to turn a light on here.” The philosophy is that the students should be learning more about what light does onstage than how to operate sophisticated lighting consoles.

“The technology is here, but by the time these students get out of college it will change. What is not different is the way colored light changes the color of your sets and costumes,” Campbell adds. On the practical side, this means that while the auditorium might have more dimmers than they would actually use, access to the circuits is easy and safe.

In planning the layout of the room, the designers opted to add cross aisles for several reasons. First, this allows access so that disabled persons can easily reach the center section of the auditorium on both the orchestra and balcony levels (there is also good wheelchair access to the stage). Another benefit of the cross aisles is to break the room down and make the apparent scale seem more intimate. “There are six smaller seating areas,” notes Campbell, “rather than one voluminous sea of seats.”

To assure good sightlines from the back of the orchestra level, the slope of the floor has an isometric curve, a little shallower in the front than a straight, flat rake. The seats are also staggered to improve viewing. Since it is a school, the arms on the upholstered seats, manufactured by Hussey Seating, are a plastic laminate instead of wood.

There is a combined control booth in the balcony, used for lighting, followspots, and projection. A location behind the orchestra-level seats serves as an audio mixing station, and as a remote location for the lighting console, which can also be used at another remote position in the center of the auditorium. The lighting console is an ETC Express 250 with DMX512, ETCLink, a remote focus unit, and ETCNet. There are one-and-a-half racks containing a total of 144 ETC Sensor dimmers for the theatrical system, plus a rack of 12 dimmers for the house system. There are 158 circuits of extended rise-time dimmers and 142 circuits of ETC distribution.

While the lighting fixture inventory includes 56 ETC Source Four ellipsoidals of various sizes, 12 Altman 165Q fresnels, and 20 Lighting & Electronics border lights, there are no moving lights installed in the venue at this time. “You need to learn the basics first, and how light behaves,” says Campbell. The lighting system was provided by BMI Supply in Queensbury, NY.

In addition to the overhead electrics and front-of-house truss, lighting positions include side booms set into alcoves in the walls, and a continuous rail along the balcony front. The side booms have easy access via doors on the balcony level and from a second-floor corridor that opens onto a platform. “The less the students are on ladders, the better,” says Campbell.

Acentech of Cambridge, MA, served as acoustician for the project, with Rein Pirn as the lead acoustician, working with consultant Carl Rosenberg. To assure proper room acoustics, the side walls and ceiling are angled to form planes that help distribute sound to the rear of the room, and are made of materials that are hard and reflective. In contrast, the back wall is softer and more absorptive to help control reverb time. The upholstered seats also stabilize reverb in the room. “It is not a large volume, but it is well controlled and serves the client well in a wide variety of uses,” notes Rosenberg.

The acousticians also worked to minimize the infiltration of external noise into the space as much as possible. This includes making sure that the mechanical systems distribute air at low velocity and the diffusers have a rating of less than NC25. The duct system has vibration isolation so that any noise from the heating or air-conditioning doesn't impinge on the performance space.

The sound system was designed by Kurt Milligan of Acentech, with Jim Messinger and Jim Moore of Brown Sound in East Syracuse, NY, as the installation contractors. The flexibility of the space is reflected in the system design, so that for a simple lecture or town meeting, microphones can be plugged into special receptacles and a wireless microphone can be passed around the audience for questions. For theatre, music, and other more complex productions, a 24-channel Spirit by Soundcraft LX7 console can be used. The audio patchbay allows for all signals to be routed to various locations in the auditorium.

The sound system also includes Shure wireless microphone systems, AKG floor mics, Crown amplifiers (four CT-810s and one CT-210), a Peavey A/A 8P preamp, a Peavey X-Frame Digital Signal Processor, and Peavey MM-8848 breakout box, as well as one Denon DN-1050R mini-disk recorder/player, one Denon DCM-60P CD player, and one Tascam DA-30MKII DAT player-recorder for playback.

Overhead mics that can be used for archival recording can also be used with monitor speakers in the green room, dressing rooms, and box office. A two-channel Telex intercom system allows for theatre-wide communication.

The full-range loudspeaker system includes an EAW SB 250 subwoofer, EAW AS 690 three-way speakers, and four EAW LA212 stage monitors. The system is designed to allow for relatively high levels of reinforcement and playback. Signal processing is via the Peavey X-frame.

The Taconic Hills Central School auditorium was designed so that the lobby and vestibule areas are of a good size and independent. “It's not like you are walking down a hallway and there is the door to the auditorium. You can lock the rest of the school and still have good access for outside groups to use the space for performances,” notes Campbell. “This is really more like a small college theatre than your typical high school auditorium.”