Student Work
Title
Gasworks Theatre
Project Description
Gasworks Theatre rejects the traditional division between front-of-house and back-of-house space and restructures the theatre around a shared all-of-house zone. This zone is both programmatic and symbolic, permitting greater exchange among spectators, actors, production staff, and the public at large. Spatially, this all-of-house realm occupies the charged in-between spaces among the site’s five disparate structures, three preserved nineteenth-century masonry buildings, and two new facilities for theatre production. These structures distribute and restructure the functions of the theatre–from ticketing to costume maintenance and prop fabrication–such that the all-of-house zone is a place of necessary congregation and mixing. Above, the continuity of this all-of-house world is manifest in the uninterrupted roof place that caps the site. Below, the floor of the city rolls right through the project, connecting Gasworks Theatre to the everyday performance of the city beyond.