Construction pictures, Miller Theatre Complex

Last Friday, I donned a hard hat and, accompanied by UO Theater Department Chair John Schmor, re-toured the building(s) (first blogged here) that will be the new UO theater space, aka the Miller Theater Complex.

Things I learned:

• There's a naming contest underway for the now-called "New Black Box Theater." The contest, open to theater students, comes with a $500 scholarship and a temporary name. Me: "Yeah, aren't you still looking for a donor?" Schmor, more diplomatically: "We want to hold the naming opportunity open for a future donor."

• Before the new steps to the new Robinson lobby got poured, theater faculty and students held a blessing ceremony and buried things (including wine and dog tags) in what Schmor described as something "Elizabethan theaters would do."

• The new laundry and dye room, off the costume shop and with excellent ventilation, almost wasn't built — it was unused space until someone noticed it. This weirdly reminded me of hiding spaces for Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe. (Who was measuring the crawl space, you know? Um, perhaps too many readings of Corrie ten Boom's Holocaust memoir The Hiding Place as an 11- and 12-year-old?)

• Something this big takes competitive giving. That is to say, though there was a grant from the ASUO and an alumni fundraising campaign, things kicked into high gear when, how to say this, one wealthy donor started giving, and her friends then felt obliged to give as well. Or maybe not obliged ... I imagine Schmor might say felt the opportunity to give. Another large donor jumped in to save the project at a crucial point.

• There's a guy in the Bay Area named Smokey whose job is restoring old theater seats. And he's doing all of the seats for the old Robinson Theatre.

• Schmor and Joseph Gilg want to know just exactly when the (horrific) Arena Theatre space came into being. Was it during a post-war renovation of Villard? It's a mystery. (And Arena will soon be turned back into classroom/practice space. With [I think Schmor used this word] happy colors on the wall instead of the black box, um, black.)

Photos follow the jump.

Again, the new, unnamed black box theater, looking back toward the theater lobby.

The theater will have flexible seating for 125-175 people and, Schmor said, will have much better options for patrons with disabilities. Look up at the pipes running electrical wires ...

And see more of them here.

Schmor charmingly kept on pointing out these things all over the new theater. Also, he talked about how very excited lighting prof Janet Rose feels about taking down the (my word) crap lighting grid in Arena.

Speaking of crap to gold, here's the old costume shop and the old dye area (note the ventilation):

Note the, er, lowish ceiling (it's in the basement of Villard).

The dye shop ...

... and a tilted look at its "ventilation system." I think I was in shock from the potential fumes and couldn't hold the camera correctly.

And here's the new costume shop space:

Bigger! More light! And a dye/laundry room with big-time ventilation off to the left!

See why the costume folks are giddy?

And finally:

The new lobby. That front will be glass.

Since I was there a month ago, things like bathrooms, costume storage space and the new scene shop have gotten much more framed and solidly farther along. What will it look like in August? I'll get yet another theater prof to take me through then.