The new LED marquee on the Richmond CenterStage was one of the few modern touches the design team was able to make to the look of the theatre.

A look at the renovation of the Carpenter Theatre at the heart of the Richmond CenterStage Performing Arts Complex

Richmond CenterStage is a new arts center in downtown Richmond, Va. that’s truly community-based and boasts the renovated Carpenter Theatre at the heart of the complex. The Carpenter was originally the 1928 Loew’s Theatre with a rich Spanish Mission style designed by one of the great atmospheric architects of the day, John Eberson. It operated as a movie theatre until 1979 then underwent a renovation in 1983 when it was renamed the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts. However the space still lacked the proper support needed to serve as the multi-function home for the city’s symphony, ballet and opera companies as well as accommodating other local producing organizations and touring productions. The Carpenter closed in 2004 for renovation and after a few stops and starts the newly renovated space reopened this past September. In addition to Broadway tours, the Carpenter Theatre is now the home for Richmond Symphony, Virginia Opera and the Richmond Ballet, all of which have very diverse needs of the performance space.

Part of the CenterStage design included an adaptive reuse of Thalhimer’s department store next door to the Carpenter Stage. It now houses the box office and several new performance, educational and rehearsal spaces.

The renovation team included the architect for the project, Boston, Mass.-based Wilson Butler Architects and theatre consultant Theatre Projects Consultants Inc. from Norwalk, Conn. The acoustician was JaffeHolden, who also has offices in Norwalk, Conn. Bruce Herrmann of Wilson Butler worked closely with Theatre Projects’ project mangers Millie Dixon and Jules Lauve. JaffeHolden’s Mark Holden, Larry King and Mark Turpin brought acoustical expertise to the equipment design and engineering for all of the audio, video and communications systems. Lighting designer Daina Yurkus of Boston, Mass.-based Light This! handled the architectural lighting design.

Lauve chalks a lot of the success of the project up to the collaboration with Richmond CenterStage technical director Steve Sweet. “Steve used to work at Theatre Projects and it was our good fortune that Richmond CenterStage brought him on board. Its one thing to have someone who knows the project, it’s another thing to have somebody who knows how to work as a true team member to accomplish the best possible results for everybody.” The general contracting for the project was a joint venture of firms Gilbane and Christman. “The two firms joined forces in order to deliver the project in what was a pretty much a short schedule,” notes Lauve. “The project was a success due to a tireless and unending focus by project managers Colin Robinson of Gilbane and Robert Stelma of Christman.”

But the team would have had a lot harder time of it without the widespread support of city officials.

“Usually projects reach a great amount of skepticism with city officials,” says Bruce Herrmann, a director at Wilson Butler. “But in Richmond, everyone worked with us. ‘We can’t allow you to do that—but have you thought about this?’ And then next thing you know I’m working with the head building official and he’s trying to find ways to help us solve a problem.”

Since the Carpenter Theatre was originally a vaudeville-style theatre intended to accommodate movies and small variety acts, the stage and stagehouse were limited by today’s performance standards. The stage was 76 feet wide and only 29 feet deep. There was no loading dock; you had to back a truck down an alley, offload, turn a corner into another alley and enter through a door upstage right. As part of this renovation, the back of the stage and the existing stagehouse were demolished. Lauve explains this decision. “Because the stage was so shallow, the grid was so low and all of the back of house areas were woefully inadequate, the decision was made to slice off and remove the old stage house, dressing rooms and associated support spaces—and build a new facility that would support everyone.” The stage is now 102 feet wide by 49 feet deep and there are three loading docks. The dressing room capacity has been increased from accommodating only 39 performers to 200.

“It sounds complicated, but building the new stage house was actually the easy part,” says Herrmann. “The hard part was the fact that the building is historical, and even though we were going to tear off the stage, we had to save everything inside. And there’s a gigantic opening—the proscenium.” In order to preserve the building and qualify for historic tax credits crews had to demolish the old brick stage house, build new foundations (and in some cases underpin the existing foundations), then build the new stage house up to the historic part of the building and join them together without damaging anything.

“It became a really interesting puzzle,” says Herrmann. To solve it they went with a “belt and suspenders” approach—they temporarily filled the proscenium with layers of plastic and other protective coverings, and positively pressurized the auditorium so that if there was a tear or rip in the plastic air pressure would push the dust back into the stage house, and not pull it into the historic audience chamber. “We were able to save and restore everything in the part of the building that wasn’t being torn down and simultaneously build the new stage house where the old stage house had been.”

Red Hill Distributors were able to use the original 1926 standards for the seats.

The design team collaborated to put the same amount of care and thought into restoring the auditorium, too. The entire auditorium was re-raked to offer improved seating, sightlines, acoustics and comfort while maintaining the treasured ambience of the 1920s architecture. “The Carpenter Theatre, when it was originally designed as a Loew’s movie house by the preeminent architect John Eberson, felt like you were in another time and place when you walked in to the space,” says Lauve. “The blue sky, the architecture on the walls, they were an effort to take people someplace that they might never visit. That little bit of fantasy; that themeing that lets you visit a world that otherwise isn’t available to you; Eberson created those magical places. There was a very clear directive from the current client, one which the entire design team shared, that the restoration of the auditorium maintain a strong loyalty to the original design look and feel that Eberson had created.” One central element of the original design, the night sky ceiling, was preserved and enhanced. It was repainted a deep, midnight blue and the twinkling stars are provided by a newly installed fiber optic lighting system.

“The fiber optics are hooked up to eight different projectors, and the cables are bundled in different ways so they brighten and dim—they twinkle,” says Herrmann. “When we made them, we had to be sure that they didn’t twinkle in any pattern that anyone could ever recognize. I told the electrician that we were just looking for a random arrangement and he said ‘No, you gotta tell me exactly where you want ‘em.’ So we had to do a drawing that located dimensionally where all the new stars were going into the sky.”

The newly restored Carpenter theatre at Richmond CenterStage

Multi-Purpose Space
With three major companies, the symphony, the ballet and the opera as well as local groups and tours, the Carpenter has to serve many differing uses. “Unlike many multi-purpose spaces that are first for one kind of program and secondarily for others; the priority here was to create a balance that truly served the constituents equally,” explains Lauve. “One example is the stage floor. We, and the entire team, put what some may consider an inordinate amount of effort into defining the stage floor system to provide the resilience required for dance, the durability required for opera and touring productions, and the look appropriate for a performance platform for an orchestra.”

The Richmond Symphony has a large custom-designed acoustical shell from JaffeHolden, that when not in use, takes up a lot of the fly space in the theatre. Theatre Projects came up with a creative solution to this challenge. “I feel that one of the best solutions was engineered by our Technical Production team, led by Michael Nishball, director of technical production. They developed a clever means of relocating the tip-and fly orchestra ceiling pieces such that other groups can use fly space that would otherwise be blocked. There is a system of lineshaft winches, chain motors and dollies to relocate the ceiling to free up any zone of the stagehouse where either a touring company or the opera may wish to hang scenery.”
Besides the custom symphony shell, JaffeHolden’s scope included developing a world-class acoustic design that was seamlessly integrated into the architecture of the historic building. The design gives the theatre a symphonic sound with clarity, presence, warmth and resonance. The acoustics take into consideration and work well for opera and dance productions, as well as for touring Broadway musicals. The audio systems that the JaffeHolden team designed were provided by Onyx.

Acoustical clouds just past the proscenium in the Carpenter were designed to look like actual clouds in order to preserve the otherworldly atmosphere of the theatre.

Everything Old is New Again
The dimming and control system for the newly renovated Carpenter Theatre is from Electronic Theatre Controls. “Ted Ozimek from ETC was the project manager and ETC’s Andy Flatt was the onsite engineer commissioning the system,” comments Lauve. “They did a fantastic job of integrating this new equipment into this old house.” For rigging, a single-purchase counterweight system was installed by Texas Scenic with onsite project management by Steve Siegmund.

The original seat count in the Carpenter was 1,850; in the renovation, the count was reduced to 1,800 with wider seats and more legroom provided. The seating was added to the renovation scope late in the project but considered a necessary addition. “Douglas Wiggins at Red Hill Distributors stepped up and helped deliver on this priority,” says Lauve. “The refurbished seats have many parts of the original seating from 1928—the standards were the same; the backs are the ones that are a holdover from the previous renovation. Red Hill provided all new upholstery, support and hinge mechanisms.” In addition to the renovations to the house, other areas were improved to make the audience experience that much better, including expanding the lobby, ticketing and concession areas to meet modern standards. Even the restrooms were improved with the number of women’s toilet stalls increasing from nine to 36.

There were no pictures of the original curtain in the theatre, so designers came up with a design that looked like it belonged to the period.

Also a part of the Richmond CenterStage is the adaptive reuse of Thalhimer’s department store next door, which is now named Dorothy Pauley Square and serves as a home for local and regional artists with spaces for music, theatre, dance and arts education. The 80,000 square foot Pauley Square includes Gottwald Playhouse, a 200-seat playhouse for local performances; Rhythm Hall, a multipurpose room; Genworth BrightLights Education Center; a gallery, artist studios and support spaces. “Out of respect for the history, the decision was made to renovate rather than demolish,” says Lauve. “The ability to carry another part of the history of Richmond forward that way was a good decision by the client.”

Which is not to say it didn’t come with its own complications. “Getting the floors to line up was its own little geometry problem, because they were never meant to have internal connections,” says Herrmann. But if the renovating a department store and connecting it to the theatre presented problems, it also presented opportunities. The design team took full advantage of the store’s large first-floor windows. Now, instead of displaying pret a porter, the windows showcase the art and performances happening inside. An art gallery in the space uses the windows to display their pieces to full effect. The design team also included A/V connections in all of the windows so that a flat-screen monitor can be placed on the interior side facing out and the audio associated with its video can be sent to exterior speakers so pedestrians can see shows that happened in the past or previews of what’s playing now.

“One of the mottos we used here was that ‘the show begins at the sidewalk.’ Whether that’s under the marquee or along the sidewalk, it was all about trying to entice people into the theatre,” adds Herrmann.
The Richmond CenterStage has already enticed a lot of organizations to partner with them. The complex’s local producing resident companies also include African American Repertory Theatre; Barksdale Theatre/Theatre IV; Elegba Folklore Society; Richmond Ballet; Richmond Jazz Society; Richmond Shakespeare; Richmond Symphony; SPARC Performing Arts School; and Virginia Opera. Presenting companies include: Broadway in Richmond (Jam Theatricals); City of Richmond Department of Parks and Recreation; Modlin Center; and Richmond Forum.

When the Carpenter Theatre reopened in September it marked the 81st anniversary of the space, once again giving Richmond an arts magnet for downtown that the whole community can be proud of along with the design team. Surely John Eberson would be very happy to see his original design preserved and enhanced for a new generation to enjoy the arts, eight decades later.  

Michael S. Eddy has worked in the entertainment technology industry for over 25 years with ETC, Rosco, Barbizon and Kliegl Bros. as well as being a lighting designer and technical editor.

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