Road Test: Strong Technobeam, page 40 - PLSN.com

INTERVIEW
Making the Most of the Theatre Space
Bill Conner, theatre consultant with Bill Conner
Associates, LLC.
Bill Conner on educating the architect
and client, and watching the ROI
The Kinkaid School in Houston needed a 50-foot fly loft in an area with 35-foot zoning. The
780-seat theatre is sunken 23 feet below ground.
By RobLudwig
What is a theatre consultant? What do
they do? Who are their customers?
For this month’s PLSN Interview, we
spoke with Bill Conner of Bill Conner Associates,
LLC. Conner studied under the father of
modern stage lighting, George C. Izenour, en
route to building a successful career in the field.
In this interview, he explains the vital role theatre
consultants perform in our industry and
why the discipline deserves full-time attention.
PLSN: How did you get started in the industry
and what led you to theatre planning?
Bill Conner: In reverse order, I was exposed
to the idea of facility planning as an
undergraduate, and then again in graduate
school at Yale, from George C. Izenour. I took
classes with Izenour, but at that time, it was
not really an option; there were so few theatre
consultants in the 1970s, it was hard to
follow that idea as a career path.
So I graduated from Yale and taught all
aspects of technical theatre at a college for
several years. Then, Bill Warfel at Yale called
one day. He had been doing theatre consulting
part-time and decided to go full-time. I
went to work for him in 1982.
What was that like back then, considering
the equipment you had to work with?
Equipment in terms of theatre equipment
or in terms of the Radio Shack TRS-80 computers
we were working on?
Good point…both. Did you do a lot of
your designs manually, or were you
using computers?
The only thing done on computers,
initially, was word processing. Actually,
I started with Warfel at Systems
Design Associates in
1982. Gene Leitermann, who
is now the head of Theatre
Projects US,was also working
there with me. Both of us have
gone on and done fairly well
in the business. AutoDesk introduced
AutoCAD around
that time, and we bought it
at the end of 1982. In terms
of tools, we were an early
adopter and I’m a CAD geek,
not that that’s interesting.
That’s actually very interesting.
We were still doing an awful lot of drawing
by hand but we starting to do some by
computer in December of 1982.
And what about the gear?
I don’t think it has changed that much.
But technology has changed.
The Strand CD80 was a revolutionary departure
from patch panels and 6K dimmers.
And now, with the dimmer per circuit system,
with the modern console, control systems
have gotten better and more powerful. And,
dimmers do a little bit more than they did, but
there isn’t a huge change. Two things have
happened: when I started, the expectation of
the number of circuits was growing, so you’d
go from 50 circuits, that being a lot, to several
hundred. Now, 25 years plus later, I see that
changing back because of automated lighting.
Are you adding other types of technology,
now?
Yes.
Are those new technologies more prevalent,
now? Do you see this as somewhat of a revolutionary
time for theatre design?
I think that, in terms of the growth of
the use of automated lighting, it is a major
change, and also with the introduction of viable
distributed dimming products.
Are most of your systems networked, as
well?
I stopped using DMX in the wall in
about 2000 and realized it was time to go all
Ethernet. That’s one of the hard things; I’ve
got to figure out what the technology is going
to be when the theatre
opens and the years after that,
not what it is today.
There are lots of people
out there that advocate putting
in a lot of DMX wire because
that’s what they are
used to. But I see that as shortsighted
when you’re starting
with a new building that’s
supposed to last 25 or 50
years. A modern school building
isn’t considered a 50-year
building anymore, and that’s
one of the unfortunate things.
In fact, I asked the other day, and the school
district said it was considered a 40 to 45 year
building before they tear it down and replace
it, which is kind of a frightening thought.
Especially if you compare the state of new
theatres now, as opposed to when you
started — the high school theatre is much
more like a professional theatre, now.
Yes — some are. There are clearly a large
group of them that are not, which professional
consultants are not involved in.
That brings us to a good point: Describe
the importance of your role in the theatre
planning process.
A hundred years ago, an architect would
probably make every decision — mechanical,
structural, and electrical — with maybe
some input on some of the specialties. On
25 sheets of drawings he would show everything
for the building — lighting, heating, the
whole thing. Today, the systems have gotten
so complicated that there might be 25 consultants
on a major project because everything
is so specialized. I think the growth of
specialization is a significant change. People
ask me why things aren’t more coordinated
and that’s the answer, unfortunately.
The dirty secret of architecture, and anyone
with a little experience will not take exception to
this statement, is that construction documents
have gone to hell in the last 30 years. It means
the systems are too complicated, and even the
electrical engineer is going struggle to keep
track of what he’s doing with the stage lighting.
The importance of my role is bringing
an overall plan to the whole facility. What
a professional theatre consultant brings is
Hope auditorium
much more than equipment selection and
arrangement.
How does your role differ compared to professionals
that might get involved in theatre
planning as part of a separate endeavor?
I think that the subject matter deserves
a full-time effort. If part of your time is spent
as an educator, or as a sales person, I don’t
think you can possibly be as well versed or
well founded as someone who does it fulltime,
nor have a broad of command of the
subject. The depth and breadth of knowledge
needed to be a part of a building design’s
team is different than what an educator,
or a sales rep, has.
Who is your primary customer?
I do, generally, work for architects. I’m
usually part of a design team that is led by an
architect.
Can you tell us about the design process?
In a typical, or best case project, the
theatre consultant produces the first program
of requirements for the facility that
determine everything from seat count, to
stage size, and scale of lighting and type
of rigging and so on. The number of restrooms,
size of the lobby, need for concession
stands, and the number of loading
docks and so on, are all basic building
program of information. It’s a lot more
than just equipment.
Most professional theatre consultants,
on projects they find successful,
develop the first plan of the seating and
stage, usually called resource drawings,
or general arrangement drawing.
54 PLSN MARCH 2008
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