Art can be found anywhere. For the Royal Shakespeare Company, art is found in a refurbished parking garage. Utilizing the latest technology in fabrication (read: cheap and easy), The Transition Theatre will be the home of the RSC until renovations on the Royal Shakespeare Theater are completed in 2009.
The advantage of the temporary space, says artistic director Michael Boyd, is that it will be built to the same "thrust" configuration as the refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theatre, giving the company the chance to try out ideas for the new space before it is finished. [ ]
The Transition Theatre, as it has been dubbed, will be constructed from panels made from a metallic material called Corten A, which will be bolted together on site.[ ]
"The other thing I love about it is its simplicity," Boydsays. "It's just a big box with a theatre inside it. I quite like the fact that it's a tin can on the outside. It's going to look like a big rusty container, and that's fine by me."
You remember that episode of Head of the Class where Charlie, the liberal and loveable teacher, directed Hamlet in a black box garage with all sorts of crazy PoMo and artistic representations of the Dane? This theater is like that except its not a loveable 80s sitcom.
Also, beware of artistic directors who look forward to working in metal theaters within parking garages. They say that they are restraining their bourgeois notion of theater," but deep down they want to direct a multi-million dollar production of LaZZor Othello.
Christopher
Portland, OR
November 2002
JAN 13, 2005 09:18 PM