RSC and the New Year
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Simon Harper
Deputy Project Director - 06 January 2006
It hit me this week that it’s no longer 2005, we’ve entered the New Year and that’s when the theatre opens so it all seems more immediate. It means we have to start organising not just the building but also the people that are going to move into it and use the theatre.
At the minute we’re building the auditorium structure. You can actually see what it’s going to look like now. It’s like a theatre rather than an empty shed. The balconies are currently being built and it’s possible for you to go and stand in the stage area and feel like you are in a theatre. You can see the auditorium around you – you can tell how close the audience are going to be to the actors.
I’m very excited it’s starting to take shape. It’s actually starting to feel like a living building not a building site. You can now walk in the foyer spaces and get a feel for what the public areas will be like.
We’re coming up to the time when we’ll have finished the internal steel works and the internal walls will go up and the doors will go on. Things are moving quickly now and it’s crunch time for the schedule we’re on track at the minute.
We’re even starting to do some exploration work for the main Royal Shakespeare Theatre site. We’ve been doing some test drilling next to the Swan Theatre to see if the ground in that area would be suitable for a new and very eco-friendly type of cooling. It uses cold water below ground level to cool our buildings. This will mean that we won’t use loads of electricity for heating and cooling making the building more energy efficient.