Chenery Lobby Renovation Underway

Renovation work began 6/15/09

Outer Westnedge Lobby, Before

Outer Westnedge Lobby, 6/23/09Main Westnedge Lobby, BeforeMain Westnedge Lobby, 6/23/09

Looking Northeast, Before Looking Northeast,6/23/09
Dutton Hallway, Looking West, Before
Dutton Hallway, Looking West, 6/23/09 Main Dutton Entrance, Looking North, Before Main Dutton Entrance, Looking North, 6/24/09 Room 130, 6/23/09
Room 226, 6/24/09

New Chenery Draperies

They're finally here, and they are beautiful!

Substantially Finished Auditorium

The New 3-Section Main Floor of Chenery AuditoriumAll the seats are finally in!

(Check previous two posts for progress pictures.)

Any stage lighting instruments hanging in the seating area are now white.
The main stage front lighting has been moved to the rear of the Gallery, along with a new follow-spot booth.
White lights hang in front of the follow-spot booth.

The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra along with the Kalamazoo Singers were the first to use the renovated space on October 25, 2008.

Two Weeks To Go. . .

Here are the latest pics:

The color is off here... The seats are red.

Four Weeks To Go

Renovation of Chenery Auditorium continues with a projected finish date of October 10--just four more weeks. This picture shows pipes that have been installed in the third floor technical gallery to hold the main front stage lighting instruments. The doorway into the darkness is the follow spotlight booth, which has been painted black. The floors up here have yet to be painted.The seating floor of the Gallery (third floor) has been painted, and the walls primed. The unpainted cross-aisle will get custom wool carpet.

Here's a view showing the Balcony and Gallery seating areas with new floor paint. Down below is the very unfinished Main Floor. We sure could use some seats.

Again, the unfinished Main Floor. But the orchestra pit was freshly painted black. Notice the newly cut straight edge of the stage front. This makes the pit much more usable.

And here's the view looking out from the stage. Most of the new main floor back walls have been plaster coated, and all the door frames are in. There's more ceiling drywalling and plastering to do, plus all the painting. The seating installation is scheduled to start in the Gallery next week.

We should definitely be ready for the Kalamazoo Symphony on October 25.

This Summer at Chenery Aud.

A lot of work is going on this summer as we continue on our path of upgrading the old auditorium once again, taking it up another notch in quality and prestige. Here are a few pictures of some of the work in progress:

At the rear of the main floor where the last three rows of seats rose above the lobby entrance level, the concrete was removed so the floor could be leveled off. At some places, there was just dirt under the old floor, while other places revealed the tunnels and air chases that are underneath. All that concrete removal at the back was done behind a large plastic curtain to keep the rest of the auditorium clean. . . . . . . . .yeah, right. Here, you can see the completed new floor at the rear of the main floor. You can also see one of the new aisle entrance doorways cut through the back wall (between the two sets of doors you can see), as we change from the old four sections of seats with five aisles to the new three sections of seats with four aisles. You also see a temporary light bulb hanging where there used to be a fancy crystal fixture in the center of a big, round decorative scrolled plaster grille. With the new configuration eliminating the back four rows of seats at this level, those fixtures, including the big plaster grilles, are being removed and stored for re-installation in our lobby next year.

Here, you can also see the start of the new back wall on the third floor, where we are eliminating the back three rows of seats. These back wall moves are totally motivated by efforts to improve the already fabulous acoustics of the auditorium. The change on the main floor also enables us to add sound-lock entries, to better isolate noise from the lobby. The new space on the third floor will allow us to move the main front stage lighting off the front of that balcony and into the area behind the new back wall, as well as provide a new follow-spotlight booth at a much improved angle.

Here's a closer look at the framing of the new "scalloped" back wall on the third floor.

This shows the third floor back wall after one layer of drywall was applied to the back side, and two layers of drywall were applied to the front. The drywall then gets coated with plaster. Here, the first coat of plaster has been applied on the left side. On the main floor, the framing is almost done to create the new back wall, sound control booth, sound lock entries, and lobby-facing storage rooms.

This is one of the openings under the first balcony where the four light fixtures and plaster grilles have been removed.

I am sitting at my desk in my second floor office as workers unload drywall through a window from a forklift outside. This drywall is for the new sound lock entries on the second floor.

Another big job is changing the shape of the stage front from curved to straight to create more usable space in the orchestra pit. After carpenters cut back and removed the wood flooring, a remote-controlled robot came in and "bit off" chunks of concrete.

After initial chomping by the robot, a diamond saw was used to make a nice, clean cut most of the way through the concrete. (Cutting it all the way through would cause it to fall off in one huge, unmanageable piece.)

Then the robot attacks the concrete again, saving hours of grueling manual labor.

All for now.

Improv Class

One of James' natural talents is something on the order of acting (or making a big production, or attempting to be a character, or being goofy to make someone laugh), so for the third year, we've enrolled him in a one-week camp at the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre to learn about how real actors do it. This year's class was improv, and he absolutely loved it! Here's a picture of his entire class.
Their week ended with a little show for the families, and for improv, that means playing some of the improv games. They played these kinds of games all week, but nothing we saw today was rehearsed or even planned--it was all made up as they went. The first game was "One Word Story" were they had to tell a story one person, one word at a time.
The next game was "Bus Stop." Here, the person on the left was supposed to be a normal person waiting at a bus stop, while the person on the right was supposed to be the type that would make the normal person want to leave the area. James cracked up the whole audience when he sat down next to his normal person and asked, "Will you scratch my back?"
Here is James in the same game being normal. The girl asked him a barrage of questions that he finally declared made his brain hurt.
Last was the Gibberish game. James and the seated girl were to have a conversation in gibberish. After each gibberish sentence, the girl standing would interpret what they were saying. Of course the interpretation has no need to resemble what you really think the gibberish talkers intended.
He dis great! . . . . . That's all for now.