Continued

JaffeHolden's (www.jhacoustics.com) acoustic design and systems design for the new, 324-seat Family Theater at Kennedy Center, new home for the Kennedy Center's education programs, aims at grabbing kids' attention and holding it. Acoustically speaking, loud is not the answer. "Children are all too often spoon fed audio at pretty high levels," says Holden. "They're rusty at the skill of attentive listening... Maximizing speech intelligibility, giving them a clear understanding is critical to captivating a young audience."

The $9 million Family Theater is home to the Kennedy Center's programming for young people and their families. Built with federal funds in a space that formerly housed the American Film Institute Theater, the Family Theater is part of the Center's five-year, $125 million effort to upgrade arts education and the first self-contained new theater to be created at the center in 26 years. The Family Theater opened last December, with the new Kennedy Center-commissioned and produced world premiere of the Kim Hines adaptation of Whoopi Goldberg's children's book Alice.

Concepting the room
The overall design concept for the 14,000 square foot Family Theater was very much a collaborative effort among Theater & Lighting Designer, Roger Morgan (of Sachs Morgan Studio, New York, NY), the architect, Jonathan Fishman (of Richter Cornbrooks Gribble, Inc. of Baltimore, MD), and JaffeHolden. (Morgan and Mark Holden also collaborated on the renovations of the Kennedy Center's Opera House and Concert Hall.)

"Maximizing speech from the stage, in a room at full-capacity of potentially noisy people," according to Holden, is one way to summarize the architectural, theatrical, and acoustic goals of designing the Family Theater. "We wanted to create a dry environment, one that was clear and articulate, but not overly supportive of the audience area. The idea is to control the way sound moves in the room, absorbing and attenuating the sound that comes from the kids in the audience so it's not accentuated." Accomplishing this is a matter of keeping the acoustic volume in the room down to a minimum by distributing and placing acoustic sound absorption, reflection, and diffusion surfaces in such a way that everything supports the mission of getting and keeping children completely involved in the theatrical experience.

"Everyone in programming and production is very happy with the space,” says Burke. "This was not an easy job, dealing with the extremely limited space that the architect and JaffeHolden had to work with. But they are a first-rate team, including the construction company, Whiting- Turner Contracting Co. [Baltimore, MD] and their project managers... The building did not close while construction was going on, and performances continued at the Eisenhower. If we had a construction team less attentive to our concerns, this job could have been awful.”

Using the room
"There's no such thing as a small show anymore,” says Burke. Shows developed at the Family Theater travel all over the country. Teching these productions takes into account that they may play to houses with four or five times the seating capacity of the Family Theater, and with stages much larger than the Family Theater's 32-foot wide stage.

Robert Humphrey is the sound designer for in-house developed Family Theater productions, and is also responsible for technical setup for touring productions. Humphrey has worked at the Kennedy Center for six years, starting out as tech director and sound engineer for touring shows. His experience, he says, allows him to see, "what will work and what will not.” The ability to take down and put up a show in three-hour periods is part of what must "work.”

Before the Family Theater space was completed, setup for young people's shows took place in the Theater Lab, a flexible playing space that has been home to the Center's production of "Shear Madness” for 18 years. (It's the longest running play in the United States.) "Shear Madness” plays on a stock set on wheels that rolls behind a black curtain when not in use. Humphrey conducted technical setup in this space for incoming touring shows as well.

All tech setup now takes place in the Family Theater. Outside shows come with their own tech requirements. Here, says Humphrey, he functions more like a live sound engineer. For that reason, the Yamaha PM5D, though it can easily be brought into the control booth, remains on the house floor.

However, the challenge of Humphrey's job remains, at least in part, teching shows for larger houses. Begun in 1992, "The Imagination Celebration on Tour” brings high-quality family productions to communities around the country. Many of these Youth and Family productions are specifically commissioned by the Kennedy Center. Once the pieces are fully mounted in the Family Theater, they are prepared to go on the road with four to seven performers and two to four technicians with elaborate lighting and sets. "Alice” by Whoopi Goldberg and Roald Dahl's "Willy Wonka” (based Dahl's book, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) with music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, are touring through the 2006-2007 season.

"The Family Theater is one of the smallest stages our shows would play in,” says Humphrey. "Teching a show for touring, you have to consider sight lines and stage depth, and stage width to make sure the hosting theater has enough curtain to frame out the borders.”

The Family Theater may be the smallest performance space of the ten total spaces at the Kennedy Center. But they are doing big things, and their reach far exceeds the family-friendly confines of the theater itself.