What’s the point in Reconstructed Theatres?

I'm currently helping to design a theatre in Knowsley, near Liverpool. It's a reconstruction of one of the earliest-recorded indoor theatres in the UK, the 16th-17th century Cockpit-In-Court. The working title is Shakespeare North and it's a fascinating project. I've enjoyed learning about what we know (answer: very little) and what we need to speculate …

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My favourite 29 quotes from ITEAC

I've just come back from ITEAC 2018 - a conference which runs every four years exploring current trends in theatre building design. Here's my favourite (or most future-useful) quotes while they're fresh in my mind. [These are all paraphrased via my scribbled notes. Happy to correct if I have misquoted.] "In the cinema you need …

David Hare’s ideal theatre

What would the ideal theatre look like? As designers of venue buildings it is a question we often ask ourselves. We ask ourselves the big questions, like how would an ideal building engage with the local community and how would foyers help with the visitor experience. And more than this, we spend time making technical …

Should theatre seating ever be comfortable?

I have a sore neck. It pains me to say this (figuratively - although probably literally too if I was talking to you out loud). It pains me to say this because my ailment is the result of uncomfortable theatre seating, and I've always harboured secret disdain for anyone who takes too much interest in …

Why we build venues – why are all the people missing and do critics care?

A few days ago, whilst working on a building design, I was reminded of a previously forgotten memory of going to Sunday school as a child, and being taught that a church is a group of people - not a building. This is, of course, an adage that can be said of any building that …

Why performers are like caravan drivers

People often ask me how I got into performance space design. This is not really the story of how, but rather what exactly got me interested in the first place... Architects like a metaphor. During perhaps as many as half of the new concert hall projects I work on, at some point the architect will …

Review: The Whirligig

Pershing Square Signature Center, Alice Griffin Theatre The Signature Centre produces new writing. Their latest piece The Whirligig by recently-turned-playwright Hamish Linklater takes its name from a line in Twelfth Night: "The whirligig of time brings in his revenges". What goes around comes around, in modern language. And quite literally so - Derek McLane's design sits …

Has pre-vis software led to more hazy lighting designs?

It's a question that another delegate mused at me at Showlight conference a couple of weeks ago. Lots of speakers at the conference talked about shows or events they'd lit, and some included images from their pre-visualisation work - before cutting to actual production shots that looked very similar. Very similar. Actually, in some cases it …

What is disability-led theatre and what does it mean for performance venues?

This article first appeared in the spring 2017 edition of Sightline. It’s rare for evolutions in the ecosystem of the performing arts industry to introduce new artistic and business cases that redefine the priorities of venue design. However, one of the most notable recent trends in the UK is the breakthrough of disability-led and inclusive …

What can venue designers learn from web designers?

This week, whilst at a ticketing conference, I discovered some interesting parallels between the worlds of web design and venue design. For a start, I found out that the designers of web ticketing experience are sometimes nicknamed revenue architects. Not so long ago the 'revenue journey' was the responsibility of the actual architect and venue design team …