Millikin University Center for Theatre & Dance

Location
Decatur, Illinois

Owner
Millikin University

Team
Acoustics - Threshold
Architect - BLDD Architects

Size
60,300 square feet
260-seat flexible theatre complete with orchestra pit, balcony, control booth, tech gallery, and dressing rooms

Schedule
Completed 2020

Millikin University brings together the school’s five degree programs into one new, 61,000-square-foot dedicated Center for Theatre and Dance. As one of the best theatre programs in the country, with program enrollment on the rise, the University needed to improve the student experience and honor the creativity brewing on campus; no more pushing costume carts or lugging classroom materials across campus.

Program spaces include a 260-seat studio theatre, four acting studios, two dance studios, and two design classrooms and practice rooms. The Center also includes features rarely seen in campus theater centers— a costume studio and classrooms, scene shop, and lighting/sound lab and workspace. These new workshop spaces offer students the opportunity to work with new rigging, lighting, sound and costume technology, expanding real world experience through hands-on experimentation.

The sound and light lab is outfitted with a digital audio console that can be off-line programmed in the design classroom to assure everyone has the time to perfect their craft and then hear it in action.  Projectors are available to work out complex blends and surface mapping which will scale up later in the theatre.

The studio theatre is flexible within a courtyard form. The intimacy of this form allows for the placement of supportive surfaces near actors, assuring ease of presence for reaching the whole audience without amplification — leaving the loudspeaker technology to instead support sound design or overcome a zealous score in a musical theatre setting. The floor can transform from orchestra pit, to raked audience, to stage for end stage, in-the-round, or runway setups.

The acting and dance studios are able to function independently with sound isolation that assures they don’t bother the neighbors, and connecting to the rehearsal sound systems is as easy as connecting to your Bluetooth headset.