Greg Miller gives us a glimpse into a day in the life of an acoustics consultant:

Acoustics is often viewed as a mysterious combination of art and science that requires some special intuition in order to understand. Whenever I have the chance, I relish the opportunity to demonstrate how predictably sound behaves. I had the chance to do just that at Geva Theatre Center in Rochester.

Geva is a wonderful regional theatre company, but their facilities present some serious acoustic challenges. This is no secret: we were called in because the current staff understands that there are speech clarity problems dating back 20 years. Current staff members weren’t around when the building was originally configured for theatrical productions, and they have proven to be exceptionally resourceful. Yet, the very effective “homemade” acoustic fixes, including an exceptional noise-blocking door leading from the loading dock to the stage in their smaller theatre, haven’t been enough to support their fine productions.

When evaluating an existing theatre building, we often tour the facility with the staff, then watch a play in each of the performance spaces, conduct some testing to make sure that the objective measurements coordinate with our subjective judgments, and finally return to our office with that information to write/draw up recommendations for the future improvement.

Well… that’s usually the entire process.

In the case of the Geva mainstage, one of the most significant problems is the lack of sound reflecting surfaces at locations most useful for projecting the actors’ voices. This is particularly true for cross-room sound reflection, as we talked about previously. The outer walls of the theatre are too wide for useful sound reflection, and they are set at angles that direct any useful acoustic energy away from the audience. We needed to find ways to add new sound reflective surfaces that would create beneficial sound reflections without disrupting seating areas or lighting positions.

As it happened, many of the areas we identified as beneficial locations for new reflecting surfaces were within arm’s reach. “So,” we said to ourselves, “maybe we can actually test this out right here and right now!”

And we did.

With the enthusiastic permission of the Geva staff, we ordered six sheets of 4′x8′ chipboard from the Geva scene shop and got to work. The two photos in this post are darker than I’d hoped, but they show images of the theatre as-is, and then the theatre with the chipboard set up to create some new sound reflecting surfaces. In the lower image, refer to the three areas where we placed the sheets: two on the left side of the picture and one on the right, below the balcony.

The purpose of the temporary panels was to demonstrate the way the theatre would sound different with a few modifications. We explained how the sound from the stage needed to be re-directed to the audience using reflective surfaces, and how we needed several new surfaces working together to achieve a cumulative change that would be more noticeable than if only one or two surfaces were added. Rather than simply asking the theatre staff to trust us based on expertise and experience, it was extremely rewarding to have the chance to demonstrate the changes to them. I like to think of it as having dressed the theatre in a costume for a short time.

The verdict? Conditions were improved just as we’d hoped. We outfitted half the theatre with the sheets of chipboard and left the other half in the original condition. When speaking towards the “renovated” half of the space, there was a distinct improvement compared to the “original” half. We hope we left the Geva team with a greater sense of confidence that their space could improve, knowing what the renovation will sound like after we install permanent panels. No magic required.