New theaters welcome addition

Five rows of bleacher-like seats, upholstered with red material comprise the seating of tiny T300 theatre, which senior Sara Bancroft, production manager of "Much Ado About Nothing," described as a "black box."\nToday as the Theatre/Neal-Marshall Education Center makes history, the T300 Theatre will join the strata of history. The center will house the African-American Culture and Arts Institutes as well as two new venues for the Theatre and Drama Department.\nThe building will devote 84,000 square feet of the total 117,000-square foot complex to the Theatre and Drama Department, replacing the T300 studio and the University Theatre.\nIn the T300 studio, Bancroft pointed out the stage manager's post just two feet behind the last row of audience seating. Stage Managers are responsible for lighting cues and other functions once the show starts. Because of the close range of the audience, they had to rely on non-verbal commands such as hand signals.\n"Sometimes we would put glow tape on our fingers so you could see them in the dark," Bancroft said. "There's nothing quite like doing a show in T300."\nExposed metal protrudes from the plaster of the halls on the way to the University Theatre. \n"It's just falling apart," Bancroft said. "It's ready to be renovated."\nBancroft is quick to add that T300 is not handicapped accessible because there is no elevator in the building.\nBoth the T300 and University Theatre facilities will soon be replaced by the Wells-Metz and Ruth H. Halls theatres. The Wells-Metz Theatre, contemporary and utilitarian in design, seats 246 people and boasts three stories as well as what Bancroft terms a "severe thrust." This means there is no curtain and the performance takes place only feet from the audience members seated in the first row.\nThe ground seats, placed on three sides of the stage, can be moved into different configurations to best fit the makeup of each particular production. Also, the height of the theatre provides more room for taller scenery.\n"It is a really unique space," said Bancroft. "It should be a challenge for the actors, directors and designers of the department."\nMelissa Nedell, a third-year graduate student in the Theatre and Drama Department said she is happy to work on the stage of the Wells-Metz venue. \n"You can really use the size and the depth of it with a Shakespeare show like this," said Nedell, a cast member of "Much Ado About Nothing."\nUnderneath the theatre, a room with about fifty metal poles reinforces the floor of the stage above. Any one of the black panels that they support can be taken out to permit an actor to rise from the floor.\nThe other new venue, the Ruth N. Halls Theatre, is large enough to fit a whole other set stage-left, Bancroft said. This allows more freedom and space for elaborate scenery. \nA more traditional style venue, the Halls Theatre features "European" style seating, which means the theatre's peach velvet seats are placed in a stadium-style arch facing the stage. \nBancroft said there are five large dressing rooms with lockable drawers under the counters. \n"As a stage manager I had to hold onto wedding rings, wallets, anything of value," she said. "Now the actors have their own lockable drawers."\nAnother innovation for the facility is the showers in the back stage bathrooms.\n"We do shows with full body make-up," Bancroft said, "and you know, it's disgusting."\nThe Theatre/Neal-Marshall Education Center also contains an art gallery for displaying art work related to the current production, such as sketches from the designers.\nLeon Brauner, chair of the Theatre and Drama Department, agrees that the new venue is a much-needed facility.\n"From the conception of the project there was but one goal: to create a beautiful and functional home for the education of tomorrow's theatre scholars and artists," Brauner said in a press release. "This extraordinary theatre and drama education facility removes the barriers which have for so long sapped the energy of our faculty and students."\nBancroft agrees. "That's the thing about theatre though," Bancroft said. "It can happen anywhere, but it is so nice to have (a new facility)"