At Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center —home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art— the Goizueta Stage for Youth & Families has been equipped with a Constellation® acoustic system from Meyer Sound, designed to support both youth theatre and orchestral education within a single adaptable environment.
As the largest arts educator in Georgia, serving more than one million visitors each year, including over 200,000 students and teachers, the Woodruff Arts Center requires venues capable of adapting to highly diverse programming demands.
The transformation of the Goizueta Stage was informed in part by a multi-year research study conducted by the Alliance Theatre, which identified measurable academic and emotional benefits for students attending professional theatre performances. The new stage was conceived not only as a traditional performance venue, but as a youth and family performance space capable of delivering an immersive artistic experience.
The renovated 300-seat theatre occupies a former lecture hall known as the Richard H. Rich Theatre.
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We had this space on our campus that was an old, basically abandoned lecture hall that was rarely used. We thought: what if we completely transformed it, opened up the front of the building and made it clear that we produce work for young people on a regular and consistent basis, so the community can rely on us and know that every day of the week something will be happening on this stage? explains Christopher Moses, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director of the Alliance Theatre.
That meant the space needed to be acoustically flexible and support quick transitions between different uses, Moses explains. “Symphonic chamber music requires a very different acoustic environment than musical theatre or spoken word, and we needed to move between those needs seamlessly”.
The renovations, led by architects Perkins&Will with acoustic and theatre consulting by Charcoalblue, included retractable seating that allows the auditorium to transform into an open space for galas, community gatherings and corporate events. However, within the constraints of the existing structure, the room could not physically provide the reverberation required for orchestral music while maintaining clarity for spoken word and smaller ensembles. “In its original configuration, the room had limited height and was simply too dry for the range of events anticipated”, explains Eric Magloire, Design Principal at Charcoalblue. “The type of acoustic environment we would ideally create for orchestral music was not possible within that volume”.
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The design teams determined that, given the multiple functions of the space and the need for rapid changes between programs, electroacoustic enhancement would provide the required flexibility without the need for structural expansion. After evaluating several systems, Meyer Sound Constellation was selected, in part because the Alliance Theatre has been a long-time user of Meyer Sound loudspeakers and processing in other spaces.
The Constellation system is based on 60 UP-4slim™ ultracompact installation loudspeakers and 20 ULTRA-X20™ compact point-source loudspeakers, supported by 12 MM-10XP™ miniature subwoofers. Processing is handled by the integrated digital audio platform NADIA®. The system was supplied and installed by Solotech, a certified Constellation integrator.
Working within the limitations of the existing structure, the design teams integrated Constellation from the early stages of the renovation project. Infrastructure, loudspeaker placement and microphone arrays were coordinated with architectural updates, and the ventilation ducts were engineered to operate at low velocity to minimize noise near sensitive microphones.
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The technology was never intended to visually dominate the space. Loudspeakers and microphones were considered part of the architecture from the beginning, not elements added afterward. Collaboration was key: every discipline, from structural to mechanical, worked to support that integration, says Magloire.
The result is a performance environment capable of hosting productions from the Alliance Theatre and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Theatre for Young Audiences shows, chamber music, choir rehearsals, youth orchestra sectionals, lectures, galas and experimental programming — all within a single reconfigurable acoustic framework.
Early productions in the renovated space have already demonstrated the impact of the enhanced acoustics. A recent immersive theatre production, set in an underground “burrow” environment, used spatial sound to transport audiences into the story world — an experience that would not have been possible in the former room.
Magloire recalls a moment during the opening that confirmed the design’s success: “One of the artistic directors gave me a hug and said, ‘As an artist, you don’t know how the sound makes us feel’. That’s when you know the room is working”.
I want young people and families to be captivated by awe and wonder. And I want them to have the most striking artistic experience possible so they long to come back. The Constellation system from Meyer Sound is helping us achieve that dream, says Moses.
Image credits: Perkins&Will, Raftermen, Greg Mooney, CatMax Photography
