The Royal Shakespeare Company has a new temporary theatre. It received planning permission on 10th March 2005 from the Stratford-on-Avon District Council It is known as the Courtyard Theatre and was completed in June 2006. It will be home to the RSC’s main ensemble from 2007and be used during the Complete Works Festival from July 7th 2006, starting with Michael Boyd’s Henry VI trilogy.
Work started on site in the summer of 2005 and construction to opening took just over 11 months.
The Courtyard Theatre was designed as an extension to The Other Place - the RSC’s 150-seat studio theatre. The new theatre has a new 1,050 seat auditorium, while the existing Other Place auditorium has been transformed into foyer spaces, cloakroom, bar areas, shop, booking office and call centre, dressing rooms and band rehearsal space.
This new building has external walls built of ‘Corten A’ steel sheets creating a sound-proof auditorium to meet the RSC’s high acoustic requirements. This recyclable material was chosen for its red colour, no-maintenance which blends with the surrounding buildings and the town. The interior of the walls is golden ply, and the red auditorium seating ‘floats’ inside this box. The thrust-stage auditorium design is based on an original concept by the RSC.
The entire project was realised for £6 million.
Sir Christopher Bland, Chairman, RSC said:
“It’s not often that architects exceed expectations - if only because most clients’ hopes are often unreasonably high. Our hopes were exactly that - and we got more, and better, than we bargained for, on time and on budget. Watching the first public performance from the furthest seat was proof that we had achieved our aims for our audience, in a splendid and charismatic setting.”
Architects’ Journal article