Troubleshooting the Vivian Beaumont Theatre

Abstract

Troubleshooting room acoustics can vary from the sublime to the ridiculous. This paper discusses some simple solutions to problems related to a lack of knowledge of basic acoustic characteristics. However, the main example in the paper relates to modifications made to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center over a period of many years. The Beaumont is a 1500-seat thrust theatre designed in the 1960s to house the Lincoln Center Repertory Company. Since opening night the theatre was plagued with poor speech intelligibility based on the facts that the seating capacity is too large for the thrust format and that the designers placed an immense proscenium stage house behind the thrust. The acoustic solutions implemented were based on discussions with two different managing directors, Joseph Pape and Bernard Gersten, and their different visions on how to mount productions in the space.