Wit's End

At last...

2010-04-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe we've finally reached opening. Seven years is a long time, and the last 16th months has seemed even longer. But, we're finally ready. As I type this, it's late, about 2am, and I'm sitting in the house of Theater 1. The space is dark and quiet but it doesn't feel empty. It feels anticipatory. When the building was under construction, being here at night was unnerving; I felt like a trespasser. It wasn't our space, it belonged to the construction workers and the city inspectors and the general contractor and the engineers.

But now it's ours. As soon as the stage and seats went in, the building was transformed into the familiar. If you haven't been in a theater late at night, it's really a very singular experience. All day, the theater has been a cacophony of activity. The construction crews have been installing doors, the electricians wired theater two's dimmer lines in, painters have been painting our brand new doors, the occupancy inspector for the city has walked through the building, five people are laying carpet tile everywhere and we've had five hours of rehearsal in the middle of all this ambient noise and activity. For the last three weeks, there have been crews working on the building for 18 hours a day. Deliveries, arguments, scheduling conflicts, power tools, paint fumes—all those things disappear late at night.

Empty theatres never feel dead to me. There are the ambient building noises, of course, the whisper of the air through the heating ducts, and the creak of the metal in the lighting fixtures as they cool down. When it's quiet, I can't sit in one without dozens of previous audience experiences flashing through my mind, or a hundred moments that haven't happened yet. There is a hush in the air like in a church. Not silent, but expectant.

All this money, all this effort to create such a delicate thing: an empty space filled with the future.

And we are bringing you a truly remarkable play. While our plans to build a home have been in progress for eight years, Spin has been in development for nearly nine years. Penny's work is erudite, funny, warm and remarkably insightful. I cannot think of a better introduction to Theater Wit than an evening in the company of this multilayered and intricate comedy.

This was my scheme, but it was certainly not my doing. Over 150 people have worked on making this building a reality--from donors to masons. This building and the quality of their contributions will make this space a reality for decades to come. I think that their time, skills, money and devotion to this project is awe-inspiring.

Welcome to Theater Wit.

First Time Sex

2010-04-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

Spin had it's first preview last night to a crowd of about 60 random members of the public, and it was a smashing success. It's one of my favorite performances of a play, when it first interacts with the audience. Always amazingly unexpected, and so many discoveries get made during that first performance. Sure, it can be a little rough around the edges, but it's one of the most surprising and honest evenings a play has in it's life.

Penny made the observation afterwards that the first preview is a little like having sex with someone the first time. There is a lot of "Oh, you like that, do you?" and "Wow, that's one of my A-list moves--I was sure that was going to work a lot better." At one point, the audience started laughing and clapping; none of us had any expectation of that particular line eliciting any reaction at all and we lost the next few beats. The audience also applauded right before the last line of the play, so we had a bit of a premature climax moment.

But there were a ton of pleasant surprises as well: the timing of the dialogue was dead-on, the play seemed to move the audience effortlessly between the more heartfelt, emotional lines and the comic moments. The evening felt warm and effervescent. And at the end, the show got a standing ovation, which I have never had at a first preview.

We'll do it again tonight. I guess now we're in a relationship.

"Saving" money

2009-12-22T20:42:00.000-08:00

Weeks 10-14: Some more missing bits

When last we left our little project, I had just discovered some minor omissions from the plans: specifically, the sound systems for the theatre. So as I worked to pull together specifications for that little addition, a few other items came to light
:

Some of the pipes carrying wires to WHO KNOWS WHERE?!?

• Where are the light switches for the lobby?

What lights are tied into the emergency lighting system?
Where are the work lights for the spaces?
How is power getting to the step lights for the seating?
Aren't there supposed to be light fixtures in the window displays?
Where are the running lights in the dressing rooms?
How are we controlling the house lights for the different configurations in Theater 3?
Where are the functional outlets in the theatre?
Where are all the switches for the 217 lights in the building?

And so forth... As the framing for the dry wall is erected, the electrician is starting to put in the conduit to all the various lighting positions. The questions are mounting up daily, until I call a meeting of Carmen (the electrician), Trent (the GC), Richard (the architect), and Michael Rourke (theatrical lighting consultant). As it turns out, the electrical plans are not as fully detailed as they should be. A number of things got lost in the translation between my meetings with the architect meetings and his meetings with the Electrical Engineer who drew up the plans. A number of minor details were overlooked and (as you can see above), a few major ones.

We answer as many of the minor questions as I can, but some of the major ones require research. ie, if we select a new distribution system than the one originally planned, will it make the installation of the house lights cheaper? What fixtures exactly are we hoping to use? What system are we using to integrate the house lights? I can't answer a damn one of these questions without understanding the implications, both functional and cost-wise. The meeting goes for three hours and Michael, Richard and Carmen go off to start pricing some of our various options. Gathering the full fixture schedule, pricing the electrical and theatrical changes, integrating the sound changes, etc. takes six weeks. Work is still going on in the building, but the electrical phase of the project slows waiting for information, and the nine weeks originally planned lengthen to fourteen.

Plus there is the question of how to pay for these changes. The changes are wide ranging, and while Trent is absorbing some of the costs due to insufficient specifications, the theater is on the hook for a lot of changes. Initially, the change bid comes in at $46,000. That is $45,000 more than exists in my "overage" budget. Back to the drawing board, cut things, reorganize priorities, etc. Time is ticking away. Now, it's important to understand that I know nothing whatsoever about electrical systems or dimmer controls or sound systems. I am getting various contradictory opinions and options, and doing my best to make decisions as quickly as I can, but I freely admit that I know nothing, and so often need a pile of information to try and understand the correct path. Usually what I need are rough cost estimates. Does something cost $500? $5000? $50,000? I can't make educated guesses, because that only works if you have actual education in the material at hand. And ever since the Bush years, I fear the "gut check"... so... revise, remove, rebid.

Each of these changes sparks a review of existing areas to try and save money. This process goes on for four weeks and at the conclusion of it, we have reduced our change order to about $34,000 which I feel pretty good about. It's still money we don't have but it's less money that we don't have, so I'm wrapped in a lovely false sense of security:

"Look, I saved $12,000"

"Lovely, let's see it."

"Well, not so much saved as haven't actually spent..."

"So, we'll get it back at the end?"

"No.... we won't not have had $12,000 less"

"I don't even think that's a tense. 4 weeks well spent!"

"Thanks!"

"I was being sarcastic."

But, cash worries aside, I'm starting to think construction is... well, kinda pretty...

Check out the newest gallery.

Current score
Weeks in Construction: 15
Money committed/spent: $538,000
Days Behind: 25
Over Budget: $55,000

Audition Notice: SPIN by Penny Penniston

2009-12-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

Theater Wit is currently scheduling auditions for SPIN by Penny Penniston, running 4/21/10 - 6/30/10. Rehearsals begin 3/22.

Currently casting:

Ruby Jones, professional tennis player (African American male, 20-30)

Danielle, street kid (White/Hispanic female, 16-18)

Jack, account executive (White male, 20-30)

Aaron, street kid/activist (White male, 18-20)

Ruby Jones may be Equity or non-Equity, all others non-Equity with competitive weekly rehearsal and performance pay.

Audition dates and times in January. For consideration, please send resume (include email) to

Theater Wit

attn: Spin

4720 N Winchester

Chicago IL 60640

No electronic submissions, please.

Mitchell hangs out with Ana Belaval

2009-12-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

Mitchell Fain, star of our current show "The Santland Diaries", was up bright and early Tuesday morning alongside WGN Morning News' delightful "Around Town" reporter Ana Belaval, to help spread holiday cheer, live from Michigan Avenue.

A big thanks to Mitchell, who despite the 15 degree temperature (or perhaps because of it?) was in fantastic sarcastic form. At one point, as they had a jolly Santa lurk behind him for the shot (one of his personal nightmares), Mitchell said, "Ummm, Ana, I need to ask Santa there to take six big steps back...I have a restraining order against him". The entire crew lost it and Santa looked like Mitchell had just accused him of being a rapist. It was awesome. Ana asked Mitchell if he likes children, and he leaned into the camera, saying, "Yes. especially YOURS" He's a friggin' genius, PLUS, he managed to squeeze in several great on-air mentions for the show so I pretty much want to marry him.

The show, by the way, is starting to pack 'em into Theater Building Chicago, now that the season is truly upon us. So don't wait, tickets are going fast, particularly for next week's holiday week performances starting Tuesday night. For tickets and info, go to theaterwit.org

Back to you, Larry and Robin.

Last chance for Drinks with Crumpet

2009-12-16T22:13:00.000-08:00

Enjoy cocktails with Crumpet the elf, a.k.a. Mitchell Fain - who is ALREADY playing to rave reviews in Theater Wit’s 2009 production of The Santaland Diaries - at theWit Hotel, Chicago’s hippest new downtown hangout, 201 N. State Street, this Thursday, December 17th, from 9:30 pm til ?

Crumpet is arriving straight from his evening shift working the “this way out” station at Macy’s Santaland, so he won’t have time to change out of his elf costume.

(Okay, that’s a lie, Mitchell’s really heading down to theWit straight from his Thursday, 7:30 performance at Theater Building Chicago.)

Either way, come help Mitchell and more friends of Theater Wit drown their seasonal sorrows in theWit’s sleek, second floor Library bar. Plus, you can enter-to-win free tickets and get exclusive discounts to The Santaland Diaries, playing now through January 2nd at Theater Building Chicago.

And if you haven't seen The Santaland Diaries, call the Theatre Building Chicago box office at 773.327.5252, or reserve online today at http://www.theaterwit.org. To learn more about theWit, check out http://thewithotel.com.

Stepping into the Empty Space

2009-10-26T20:14:00.000-07:00

OK, so between our benefit, Halloween and my desire to see EVERY SINGLE MINUTE OF ENTOURAGE EVER FILMED, I have not been writing about progress at the new space, and there has been amazing, astonishing progress. So, here's a quick recap of what happening in our build out:

Week 3-4

This week was mainly about pouring the new concrete for the floor. The final amount, which had been quoted at $21,000 ended up being about $19,000 of which $4,000 was already budgeted so it could have been worse. When the space was clear, the concrete truck came, a sight that delighted my four year old daughter although the noise scared her a little. You pay for the materials, but you also pay for the truck hourly, and given the subcontractor's desire to limit the truck's time, I assume that portion is non-trivial. The truck poured concrete into the bobcat, which then drove it into place and dumped it. The concrete was then shovelled into place by one team, followed by two other guys who specialialized in smoothing it out. I asked if I could write my name in it, and the GC got a pained look and whispered, "wait till these guys leave." They work really hard to smooth it out perfectly, and then some asshole comes along with a sharp stick. Fair enough.

And of course, there are more pics in the Week 3 & 4 Gallery

The floor needs to be poured in two halves, primarily to allow the plumbers to finish their work and to wait for the city to examine the piping. While we wait, here is a little walking tour of the space at the end of week 4.

Week 5-6

After weeks of seeing nothing but empty space, finally I get to see some structures go into the space. We've completed the floor, which means we can start putting in the steel supports for the utility room and the blocks for the walls. We were kind of on hold for 5 days while the concrete cured, but now we're off and running. And look! A wall, a FREAKING WALL!!

And don't forget the week 5-6 gallery...

Suddenly, the space felt a lot more real to me...

Now, some of you may remember the OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE problem with the trusses and the roof. As you can see, the building is still standing, and the truss repairs also happened this week. These needed to be completed before most of the walls could be erected, as the truss is being secured with these 75' metal rods that can't be negotiated around the walls. They actually suspend the roof on supports they bring in while they fix/replace sections of the truss. It's excitingly disaster-y. The truss repair was completed in only four days, and then the steel guys came in to start building the platform for our heating units. As part of our new "don't collapse the building" strategy, the heating units need to be inside the building as they are too heavy for the roof. Even the air condensors for the air conditioning will need to sit on a platform bridging the walls. The trusses can't support anything but the roof; we're going to build separate supports for the light grid that will use our new walls.

Now, we've had some delays. At this point, the extra work on the floor has caused the project to run two weeks behind. At this point, have no idea how to make this up, but Trent is going to talk to our electrician and drywallers to see if we can put some more labor on the job when they come in in a month. But I didn't care; seeing the building start to emerge in the real world after weeks of doing nothing but demolition and prep work has me too excited. That is nothing compared with the next few weeks when I finally get to step into one of the actual spaces...

Weeks 7-10

The first space is framed out!

And more picture tastyness in the Week 7-9 Gallery

This actually made me choke up. Sure, it's a little like a concrete bunker, but I can feel what the space is going to be like. How the stage is really proportioned. How intimate and warm the performance space will feel. Don't get me wrong, I love lobbies and HVAC and all that stuff, but this room is what we are going through all this effort for. I'm not one of those directors who can read a floorplan and get a feeling for the set. Even models often fool me. In this case, we didn't build a model to save a lot of money but I have been jumpy about my decisions. Once I saw the walls going up, I knew it had to be perfect, because we can't afford to change anything. Move a wall, miss the opening and go $20,000 into debt. All the conceptual work we've put into the space has to work because we can't make any major adjustments. Fortunately, I LOVE MY NEW SPACE.

The next few weeks are about building walls. We are framing in all the spaces so that the electrical and mechanical work can begin in early November. Some walls we can't put up yet, because we still need to fabricate and install the supports to hang the light grid off of and get the (very large) heating units into the space before we box them in. So, concrete is going onto the HVAC platform early so we don't have to delay the walls. Of course, no one is entirely sure when the HVAC equipment will arrive, but we're hopeful it will be prompt.

And, Trent figures out a way to parallelize some of the construction work so we'll be able to pick up the two weeks we've lost dealing with the floor!

Lest things feel like they're going to smoothly, Carmen (the electrician) comes to me and--since he's done theatres before, god-bless-him--asks, "Aren't you going to put sound into these spaces?"

I say, "Of course?"

He replies, "Not on these plans you aren't."

Ah. So, I don't know how to read the electrical diagrams and apparently, we've left sound off entirely. So we have an emergency four hour meeting at my house, and attempt to find a way to cut enough costs to cover the new floor and install the lighting equipment. We're now about $25,000 over budget, but I am hoping that when Carmen redoes the numbers we'll bring that back into the realm of the possible. Hmmmm...

The last two weeks go incredibly quickly, it looks like the theatre is sprouting up all around us. Check out this teeny iPhone video I made with a walkthrough of the entire space at the end of week nine and seriously, look at the Week 9 Gallery. (And if anyone knows why all this black shows up around my video, drop me an email).

Truly. Amazing.

See you at Week 10.

Current score
Weeks in Construction: 9
Money committed/spent: $308,000
Days Behind: 5
Over Budget: $25,000

Good food, fine drink and elves

2009-10-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

Our annual bbq was this weekend and was a blast. In addition to some truly fantastic food and drink donated by Cooper's and Joey's Brickhouse (if you haven't eaten with our new neighbors, you should make plans immediately), we had a truly hysterical presentation by two of our former performers from The Santaland Diaries. Mitchell Fain and Lance Baker recounting bits from their years of performing our little sketch.

After doing some of their favorite sections (and ranting about some of their favorite audience stories), we all strolled over to the theatre. It was enormously exciting to us to see people's reaction to the space. Walking though it is a significantly different experience than seeing it in pictures (although those are pretty cool). I realized that I haven't posted any updates about the building, so that's the very next post I'm doing. Today. Tomorrow. Real Soon Now. It's kind of awe-inspiring to see the space emerging, and I loved showing it to our guests. And I'll share it here. In my defense, organizing lunch for 40 and arranging to tow a roast pig down the highway still cooking really sucks the time up.

There was so much excitement at the benefit. We found it completely reinvigorating to talk to our supporters and the resident company members who came to see the sneak peek. Seeing peoples enthusiasm for what the empty space promises convinces me that this project is exactly what our community of artists, staff and audience needs.

Few days. Big post. All about the new space. Maybe a few words about Santaland. I promise.

Week 2: Where walls will be

2009-09-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

Week 2 has mainly been about beginning the process of creating walls. Here they are, surrounded by exciting heavy machinery that I'm not allowed to touch.

a view from the house of theatre one. the trenches mark the interior walls. More pics in our Week 2 Gallery

OK, we don't have "walls" per se. What we are doing this week is creating a space in which walls can exist. In essence, the entire building is bisected along the north/south axis with one huge wall that separates Theaters 1 and 2 from the public spaces and Theater 3. The ditch that the crew is working in on the left is where the dressing rooms will be. The longer trench marks the position of the largest primary wall. The roof of the building is quite high (as much as 24' above grade at its top), so these walls are going to be quite big and heavy. In addition, they need to be pretty serious about sound insulation from the lobby and the other space. There are a lot of different wall construction techniques we are using in the new building.

The key insulating walls are being built out of concrete block and dry wall. This combination is cheaper than six layers of dry wall to achieve the same sound insulation factor, but is also heavier due to all the concrete. To keep these walls from shifting (and toppling), they get anchored to the floor with metal rods sunk into the ground with new concrete poured around them to keep the entire wall immobile. So, the steps are as follows:

1 Cut into the concrete slab so we make space for the anchors
2 Set the anchors and pour new concrete around them
3 Build the concrete block walls on the anchors
4 Put drywall and insulation around the concrete walls.

So, this week was spent cutting the trenches for the anchors. Actually, most of this week was also taken up by our continuing difficulties with the floor. After completing the survey, we found that the existing floor essentially ripples up and down like crazy. There is a 10" difference between the topmost point and the lowest, and it doesn't slope evenly to a single point. Further complicating the issue is that fixing it will require three different types of material: two different types of concrete and something called Laserflow. You use the different grades of material depending on the depth you are trying to even. So, for areas less than 1 1/2" deep you can use concrete (the cheapest). Any shallower and the gravel in the concrete is too likely to protrude, so you go to a finer grade. Finally, for the 1/2" areas, concrete variants won't do it as they are too likely to crack when poured that thin, so you use this other product called Laserflow which spreads like a paste but dries like concrete.

Of course, all these different products have different (and increasing) prices. And it's a lot of area. We estimate that we will need 6200 square feet of material to even the floor out. Even concrete, the cheapest, is about $3/square foot. Do the math, and it will cost about $21,000 to raise the whole slab, even if we go to great lengths to only use the more expensive materials where we must. Trent is going to reduce the amount of concrete required by cutting styrofoam blocks in the deeper areas and pouring the concrete over it, a standard industry practice, but even then we estimate the cost of our materials to be about $16,000. Included in our fixed bid was $4,000 in repairs for the slab, but that leaves the theatre with the remaining $11,000.

Hopefully when the job is costed, we can get the price closer to $2.85/square foot since there are cost savings as the contractor doesn't need to mobilize additional staff or equipment to pour _more_ concrete. Even so, that leaves the theatre with $10,000 of cash that we haven't budgeted. Hmmmmm....

Fortunately, our electrical bid was made without acknowledgement of our being tax-exempt. As we re-estimate it, the savings on the equipment purchases from same will be between $7,000 and $9,000. That brings us within spitting distance, so I'm going to put the cost overrun of this little item at $4,000 for the moment.

We also got a rough cost for the new iron pipe we found out about last week at $2,000. As I look, the extra time it took us to survey the floor has eaten up a day, plus one day lost due to late construction. I am told we are now two days behind, but that it will be made up next week. We'll see :)

Current score
Weeks in Construction: 2
Money committed/spent: $180,000
Days Behind: 2
Over Budget: $6,000

Week 1: Oh God, we're all gonna die!

2009-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

Demolition is complete. The space as of the end of week 1 looks like this:

Look, we found an old van under the mainstage! (not really). At this point, we can really examine the entire building to look for fun surprises.

Surprise #1: The floor!

The floor in the Bailiwick is remarkably uneven. We had noticed an decided slope in the hallway to the back of the building. Once we pulled out the walls, we could see that the floor was far more uneven than we had anticipated. The concrete guys mapped out a grid using cool little laser devices to check elevations. As it turns out, the floor has a variance of over 7 1/2" from its lowest to its highest point. But it's not an even grade, oh no. The floor bucks and twists, with whole portions raised above the grade, like this picture which is where the entrance to the mainstage used to be.

Conceivably, we could break up the concrete and repour the floor, or we can give up those 7 1/2" and raise the entire base. Our GC believes that the latter will be a small incremental cost, and one he will absorb as part of his bid, so hey--this is not only cheaper, but it solves another problem...

Surprise #2: The Alley, or "Mommy, where's all this water coming from?"

Yes, the alley is higher than the floor. Why do we care? One word: Rain. If we leave this unaddressed, water will pour into theatres 2 and 3 underneath the door every time it rains. Fortunately, by raising the floor and just building in slight rakes for wheelchair access in each entry alcove, we will have our theater safely above street level which should prevent the random flooding the old space was prone to.

Surprise #3: When Measurements Attack!

When Rick (the architect) initially measured the building, he had to make a few assumptions because of lack of access to parts of the buliding filled with debris. One of these assumptions caused us to mis-draft the fire exit door on the back of the building. The existing door will be bisected by the wall separating Theater 2 from the Theater 3 dressing room. Fortunately, this is an optional door. We already had to add additional fire doors for the two spaces on the back of the buliding so we can just brick it in. I don't know how that impacts the plans we put in with the city, but Rick is looking into it.

Surprise #4: Hoffa! At Last!

We uncovered a catchbasin in the center of the building covered by concrete while the plumber was tracing pipes to prevent accidents when we sink the wall supports in. This is the original catchbasin whose purpose is to help filter out silt from the roof drainage. What we discovered was that the existing plumbing lines for the bathrooms run into this catchbasin, which goes a long way to explaining the occasionally rich odors floating up from the restrooms. The upshot is that we are going to have to lay new pipes to the front of the building, about 35 feet. This does add to my cost, so we'll see next week what the incremental cost is.

But, the most exciting news has been the trusses. In November, we had a structural engineer in to look at the existing trusses. Trusses are exciting things, as it turns out. They simultaneously keep the the walls and roof from collapsing. Plus they look cool. They look so cool, in fact, that the city won't let you build buildings with them anymore.

Actually, the city frowns on buildings engineered this way because it's hard to keep the trusses in good repair with the heavy snowfalls here in Chicago and the propensity of tenants to hang things on the trusses like light grids (the old tenant, not us). What this has done is start to bow the trusses slightly, and partially split one of them on the side. Apparently, one dramatic thing about trusses is that they are rarely overengineered for the weight of the roof. Therefore, if one truss collapes, the entire building collapses. Or so I'm told. When we first looked at the truss, one of the engineers sort of fled the building, but hey--he was an electrical engineer. The structural engineers were reassuringly bored and have provided a solution to keep us all from sudden, crushy death.

The bowing can be corrected by essentially building supports into the walls that stretch a metal cable that can be tightened annually to keep the walls supported, and the truss that's starting to give can be repaired. These repairs have been designed and we are currently looking in to bids to fix them. Fortunately, as this work will cost over $20,000, this is marked in the lease as one of the landlord's responsibilities. The Stameloses have been great supporters of this project, and the trusses should be fixed soon. But, there is a point where we may have to stop work to allow for truss repair to be completed. I'm waiting to see if there is an additional delay there.

Here's our progress so far:

Schedule - 1 day behind
Budget - $0 over, but could be several thousand dollars once we get the plumbing costs.

This coming week they will be cutting the concrete slab to do the pour and put in the fittings. It's looking awfully construction-y there!

Construction Begins!

2009-08-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

Friday, at long last, construction finally began.

this pic is also in the demolition gallery

I can’t tell you how excited I was to actually see work happening after almost 6 years of planning. This really has been a long road. I spent about three hours Friday morning putting up some signage in the front window and nominally meeting the subcontractors, but what I was really doing was watching the bobcats chew up the theatre like fucking tissue paper. I tell you, strike with one of these bad boys would take an hour. The above photo is from the old bailiwick shop after about an hour of work by one guy. Now, I did a clean up of this space in the early nineties, and it took three of us TWO WEEKS.

Here’s a video:

I mean seriously. How cool is that? (What you don’t get to see is the way five seconds after I took this video, the pile of platforms in front of collapsed toward me, taking out a part of the stairs and the work lights as I scrambled back. Also fun!)

I suspect demo is going to be one of the most exciting part this entire process since it’s so fast. And so full of possibility. The changes are dramatic. Here’s a picture of the space after only two days of work:

I must confess it was a little weird tearing down the stages that I had my first directing breaks on. Like so many others, I worked for Bailiwick Repertory. As an artistic associate from 1993 through 2004, some of my first full-scale directing experiences were at this theatre. First, in the directors fest while I was in college, and then in productions I still remember fondly like Henry VI: Blood of a Nation, and now then again. I’ve spent countless hours in this building working and seeing work. Watching it get cleared away was a curious mixture of glee and remorse. Watching demolition did reinforce my determination to transform this buliding into a truly beautiful place for the whole community to enjoy. Removing a theatre and not replacing it with an even better one sounds like a ticket to hell to atheistic ol’ me.

Lastly, here’s a video with really crappy sound I took on my iPhone showing where everything is going to be. For more pics, take a look at our gallery.

Three theatre visions

2008-09-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

Those of you who've visited the bailiwick will see some common qualities here. The existing space is a smaller front lobby with a large hall that extends down the length of the building along the south side of the mainstage space. The above scheme cuts the mainstage in two and sacrifices the shop as I had asked. It will require a new door for fire exit in the new north space. This plan also gave a pretty large chunk of backstage area but the architect had to label it "dressing" as I couldn't tell what it was for. Access to it is limited to the first two stages.

Access to the north stage is a little odd, as it requires the audience to enter onto the stage space, something I really hate in performance spaces. Let the stage be it's own space, if we are doing something specifically to pull the audience in or through a performance space, fair enough, but don't force them to wander through every single stage to find their seats. Do we really want the audience wandering through pools of blood at the end of *Titus Andronicus?* No, thank you.

Tragically, the SW corner space is also too small. Even with the rough sketch, I can see that the stage is a) too shallow (16') and more significantly, b) without backstage or dressing rooms. Once we add those, we end up with a sort of mini-studio, with seating for 40-50 and a cozy stage. All very cozy, but not what I want. Of course the SW stage is much bigger but is quite deep.

Lastly, we added a backstage toilet. Absolutely critical in a space with so many venues and one of the more requested amenities over the years at Bailiwick. But this has it's own problems. I am worried about sound bleed but more concerned about access from the SW space, no matter how configured. How can we manage to get a backstage bathroom that's accessible for all three spaces without requiring passage through the common spaces?

Curiously, the bathroom makes me think in a whole new direction. I'm contemplating Disneyworld, where there are connected passages and tunnels that run parallel and under the existing attractions but are never in the public traffic pattern. Obviously, we can't drill down into the ground and build a huge underground complex (or lair). But we *can* hide an access corridor along the center of the building. I sketched out a terrible drawing of a space divided into three roughly equivalent theaters, with the remaining quarter of the building for public space.

A corridor would run down the center of the building, broken up by access corridors for audience traffic. The corridor could connect all the backstage spaces while still offering a nice, air-buffered passage to help prevent sound bleed between spaces.

This is where I confess to being a terrible artist. What's amazing is that Rick (the architect) can take these ideas and turn them into something workable. And that's what he goes off to do. Three spaces, roughly equal in size. We will lose the existing studio (and some of my under budget dreams have just vanished in a puff of smoke), but I hope we'll get a more workable flow. New marching orders:

Corridor for backstage and tech movement

No stage under 20' deep

Don't forget dressing rooms for each space :)

Keep a bathroom if we can.

Good luck, Rick!