76
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April 2007
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Lighting
&
Sound
America
ARCHITECTURE
E d u c a t i o n
Say goodbye to the gymnatorium, as two new projects
reveal the state of the art in secondary school theatre design.
By: John Calhoun
This page: The interior of the Watchung Hills
Regional High School auditorium. Opposite:
Inside the auditorium at Darien High School.
www.lightingandsoundamerica.com
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April 2007
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77
Two of Charles Cosler Theatre Design’s
recent projects are $7 million-plus houses
with variable acoustic design for flexible
use, and state-of-the-art sound, lighting,
and rigging systems. They also happen to
be high school theatres. In the secondary
school realm, the new auditoriums at
Watchung Hills Regional High School in
New Jersey and Darien High School in
Connecticut are not that unusual. “In most
of our high school projects, the bar has
been raised,” says Cosler, whose firm has
designed a number of such facilities. “It’s
no longer the high school auditorium that
we grew up in. They are bumping up to the
level now of performing arts centers, and
they’re even calling them that.”
That’s partly because both the Watchung
and Darien theatres are intended to serve
their larger communities. “There are no
facilities like this in either town, or in the
surrounding area,” says Cosler. “So they
becomes de-facto venues for booking in
events or having meetings. That means
these facilities have to do music well, they
have to do drama well, they have to have
projection capabilities for PowerPoint and
things like that. And there’s a lot that goes
into making them flexible for those
different uses.”
There are key differences between the
projects. The 1,000-seat Watchung theatre,
which opened in September 2006,
replaces a much smaller space that more
closely resembled the auditoriums of the
past. “It was built in the 1950s or ‘60s, and
it had a tiny little stage,” says Cosler. “That
facility was held onto, and they’re using it
as a practice area for the dance and
drama departments.” Although additional
construction projects are underway at
Watchung Hills Regional High School, the
new theatre is the most ambitious
undertaking on campus.
The 1,200-seat facility at Darien, on the
other hand, is part of a brand-new $100-
PHOTO: ROBERT BENSON
HIGHER
PHOTO: NORMAN MCGRATH
