Behind the Scenes at BU: Light and Sound Lab at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre
Behind the Scenes at BU: Light and Sound Lab at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre
Behind the Scenes at BU: Light and Sound Lab at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre
Most people know BU’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre, the 75,000-square-foot state-of-the-art theater complex on Comm Ave that opened two years ago, for its soaring lobby and 250-seat theater, home to College of Fine Arts School of Theatre productions.
But the building also houses costume shops, faculty offices, classrooms, and on the third floor, a sprawling Light and Sound lab. Spread over two levels, with catwalks on the upper floor, the lab is in near-constant use. More than two dozen classes, including ones in lighting design, sound design, and media design, use the space throughout the year. The lab also functions as a test facility for lighting design students working on productions to experiment with color and special effects. Designers can see how paint samples for a show’s sets will react to light before a production is loaded into the theater.
There’s even a miniature light lab that gives students a chance to practice on scale models of sets using lights that are a third the size of the ones on stage. With equipment similar to that available in the actual theater, sound designers can try out design ideas in a multizone loudspeaker environment. And there are two stage simulation spaces, where lighting designers can practice light settings and compositions with the help of human-size models.
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