Willson Auditorium renovation

Abstract

As a small-city community theater, the 1100 seat Willson Auditorium is a multi-use facility in every sense of the word. This former high school auditorium, where Gary Cooper performed as a student, is now home to performances by the local symphony, an opera company, ballet companies, traveling amplified acts, and high-school and middle-school music and drama students. This case study discusses how the distribution of sound-absorptive material and the shapes of surfaces used in the auditorium provided less than ideal acoustical characteristics and weak projection of sound from the stage for many of the users. The measures taken to correct those issues as part of a renovation will also be discussed, including an increase in volume and redistribution of sound-absorbing and sound-reflecting surfaces, that prompted the school district music director to say the teachers “are going to freak out when they hear the way it sounds.”