It’s no shabby figure: a cool $446 million went into the design and construction of Miami’s new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. And it shows. Boasting three theatrical spaces (the Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House, the Knight Concert Hall and the black box Studio Theater), the Center clocks in at an impressive 570,000 square feet.
Complete refurbishment, acoustic overhaul and state-of-the-art lighting and video installations: it sounds like improvements made for a theatrical company of national significance, not a high school auditorium in Kentwood, Mich. But sometimes star treatment is found in strange places — and East Kentwood High School’s refurbished high school now contains technology and planning that puts it on par with many of the country’s top performance venues.
Pinnacle Hills Installation Brings Church Out of the Box
Think show-stopping effects and state-of-the-art design elements are reserved for big-time Broadway shows or Hollywood sets? The Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers, Ark. begs to differ. After two years and exhaustive team effort devoted to the staging installation in its new 3,000-seat worship facility, church leaders and community members alike are enjoying a high-tech, TV-ready church that boasts an integrated and responsive theatrical system as it helps to redefine production values in worship.
A Historic Clock Tower Is Lit Using Modern Methods.
Dr. Emmet Brown: Don’t worry! As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely eighty-eight miles per hour the instant the lightning strikes the tower, everything will be fine!
In the climax of the movie Back to the Future, Doc Brown and Marty McFly attach a steel cable to the town’s clock tower in order to harness the electricity of a pre-destined lightning strike. They then proceed to mispronounce the word “gigawatt,” and send Martyback to the future.
In a neighborhood near to Chicago’s Wrigley Field, another clock tower is lit up — without the need for a time machine or a guy named Biff.
"It’s an absolute pleasure to come to work.”
Even in this industry, you don’t hear those words every day. Don’t get me wrong; I love what I do, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. However, I still get goose bumps when someone says something like this. The person who said this to me happens to be Steve Schofield, the technical director of the Otto M. Budig Theatre at the Carnegie in Covington, Kentucky. A Man On A Mission When I asked him “why,” this is the story that unfolded…
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It’s 5:00 p.m. on a gray, drizzly night on the north side of Chicago. Surrounded by the urban campus of Northeastern Illinois University, the production studios of Chicago’s PBS affiliate, WTTW 11 Network Chicago, are deceptively still on the outside. A few security guards and a packed parking lot are the quiet indicators of what waits for me inside.
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America saw one of its most difficult economic eras in the 1930s. In the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression put an effective halt to the boom-time spending of the previous two decades. Oddly, the movie industry was one of few to not only survive, but flourish, during the thirties. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the online encyclopedia, has this to say about the trend:
“The emergence of sound films in the late 1920s, combined with the escapism that film provided to a nation down on its luck, made the film industry one of the few that succeeded in profits and in setting a national mood.”
So it should come as no surprise that some of the most beautiful and ornate theaters were built during an otherwise pennywise period.
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As Las Vegas continues to boom, it seems as if there is constantly a new hotel vying for our evenings (and our checkbooks): Cirque du Soleil shows now outnumber the seats at a blackjack table, Celine Dion performs in her own Coliseum, Elton John fills in when she’s weekending in the Hamptons and Franco Dragone produces everything but burlesque shows.
To compete in this field, venues on the strip are going after big-name performers that can pull in viewers from every generation, including one of the most well-known crooners of modern day, Barry Manilow.
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It’s cruise ship month here at PLSN, and I’m onboard. When the Swami called to give me my marching orders, I found myself staring at the bow of the Carnival Liberty.
I want to be very clear on this next statement.
This is a very big boat.
Actually, that’s not right. I don’t think I’m allowed to call it a boat. Let’s start over.
This is an extremely large ship.
How large, you ask? How about three football fields? That do anything for you? Nine hundred fifty-two feet long, and 116 feet at its widest, the newest addition to Carnival Cruise Line’s fleet tips the scales at 110,000 tons.
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“Children have a natural antipathy to books—handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.”
– Oscar Wilde
(Growing) The Hard Way
Dave Dunning, CEO of Legend Theatrical, says, “There’s an argument that’s been made that ‘most colleges are using a counterweight system and kids should learn that.’ But, in reality, you’re not going to school to learn to operate a fly system. You’re going to school to learn to be a technician or be a designer.”