Theatre Facilities
Learn more about Greensboro College Theatre’s performance, rehearsal and production spaces:
Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center
The Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center (GBHPC) is located in the Odell Building. Having undergone a $4 million renovation, it is a state-of-the-art performance facility.
The performance center is a 787-seat proscenium with modified thrust stage. The front-of-house features include new lighting-production and sound-control booths. Two house beams span over the Orchestra seating area, providing the perfect photometric positions for the stage. Also, there are wrap-around lighting positions on the balcony rail and two House Box positions, high and low. The stage space has various electrics winches, multi-cable drops, floor pockets and back-wall circuits.
The house dimming package consists of 192 ETC Sensor dimmers at 2.4 kW. The system is dimmer per circuit. There are also several locations for a remote focusing unit onstage and in the catwalks. The houselights are on an additional 29 dimmers, which can be controlled from a house panel in the booth, a house panel backstage right, or from the light board.
The control console is an ETC Ion. This board will control far beyond the available inventory in the space and is adept at controlling Servo Mechanical Fixtures (motion control lighting instruments) as well. The sound board is a Yamaha M7CL Digital Audio Mixer. The sound booth has numerous options to choose from for playback, including several MP3s, mini-disc units, a DAT unit, CD players, and computers with playback sound software. Recording is now an option with our Marantz (CDR510) dual-deck CD recorder or digital recording via computer. The space has various microphones for different types of events, a number of headsets and a Digitech Studio Twin Reverb unit. Students in the Theatre Design/Technical Program also have available to them the latest software for digital sound editing and recording for their productions.
Annie Sellars Jordan Parlor Theatre
This performance space is located off Lea Center in Main Building at the center of campus and is a very intimate, flexible black-box setting. It can be configured for proscenium, three-quarter, arena or environmental staging and seating options.
The playing area is a space about 16 feet by 20 feet, with 16 feet between columns and 20 feet from the front of the space to backstage masking.
The audience seating will vary from 79 in proscenium to 130 in three-quarter.
There are three Front of House Lighting batons above the center seating area and three electrics and other grid batons above the stage and side seating sections, each with 16 circuits, or 96 circuits total. The house dimmers are 48 NSI dimmers (1.2 kW). Hard patching is an option to maximize the lighting positions, especially during repertory shows. We also have multiple LED strip-light units, which are controlled via the lighting console and do not rely on dimming capacity.
The controller is an ETC Element 20/60 lighting console. The sound is controlled with a 16-channel Mackie mixer or a Sweetwater sound computer. There are seven hardwire speaker positions as well as numerous hardwire headset locations. This space also has numerous playback options similar to those listed for Huggins.
Immediately to the back of this space are dressing and rehearsal/warm up rooms. When not being used for productions, this venue serves as a favorite rehearsal room, class space or lighting lab for the department.
Hannah Brown Finch Memorial Chapel
Though rarely used for performance by the Theatre Department, this space is used constantly by the Music Department. Some ecumenical festivals and theatre touring productions have used this beautiful space.
The chapel has a 32-channel, programmable lighting controller. There are 32 NSI 2.4 kW dimmers installed in a dimmer-per-circuit configuration. The lighting inventory is mostly PAR 56’s, four Altman Zoom Ellipsoidals, and a number of 6X9 Altman Ellipsoidals for the side lighting positions. The lighting positions are very good but must be accessed with an A-frame ladder from the Theatre Production Studio. The sound mixer in the chapel is an 8-channel Mackie, and several playback or recording options are available for most production needs.
Rehearsal & Dance Studio Spaces
The main rehearsal space for the Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center is located in the basement of the Odell building. It is about 18 by 65 feet and features a commercial dance floor, mirrors along one wall, and special acoustical treatment.
Another place for Theatre and Dance rehearsals and classes is the Parlor Theatre mentioned above. A new facility, the Movement Lab, with state-of-the-art movement studios, is available for dance classes.
Scene Production and 501 Guilford Production Studio
The 501 Scene Production Studio (located at 501 Guilford Ave., just north of main campus) was donated to the college by Michael Haley in 2017 and is being developed not only as a production studio but also as an outdoor theatre, named for Craven Williams, the 17th president of Greensboro College, and his wife, Judith. Most scenery and properties construction is carried out in the 12,000-square-foot studio, whose ceiling is 20 feet high.
The Theatre Department has chosen this production location on campus to best model the reality of production experiences in the professional theatre world. Most often in professional theatres, the production facility is located offsite. This means that student technicians must use more good judgment and technical knowledge when planning for load-ins and strikes of sets and properties. We encourage students to work with this discipline over academic programs that build sets onstage. Doing so will allow for the addition of some more specific work stations, such as jointers, planers, and metal and wood lathes.
The stationary tools in the shops are radial arm saws, large commercial table saws, wood band saws, a second band saw for scroll work, compound miter saw, standard mire saw, lathe, several drill presses, and numerous portable power, pneumatic, and hand tools. Metal working tools in the shop include a metal cutting band saw, a 14-foot metal chop cutoff saw, arc welder, Mig welder, and oxy-acetylene welding equipment. The paint deck is 40 by 45 feet and accommodates our standard drop sizes of 18 by 36 feet for Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center and 12 by 24 feet for the Parlor Theatre. Some vertical work is possible in this space as walls are about 20 feet tall as well.
Properties Storage is in our former scene shop space, which is 65 by 65 feet and 24 feet tall. The building is brick and steel with major “I” beams above about 24 inches tall. It also has turn-of-the-20th-century, 5- by 18-feet-tall frosted glass windows on the sides. It is lit with natural light as well as large, crystal-reflector, incandescent fixtures for correct stage color balance when scene painting. The space has two loading doors, one for receiving materials and the other for loading out. The previous scene production studio is also equipped with a bathroom, tool room and shop offices. Around the perimeter of the room, are multiple air regulators and filters for pneumatic tool operations.
Another small properties storage space is located in the basement of Hanes Gymnasium, adjacent to the Scene Production Studio, which houses the Theatre Department’s Properties inventory.
Costume Shop & Storage Spaces
Our Costume Shop is located below the stage level of the Huggins Performance Center. This location allows easy access for actors and actresses for fittings and final adjustments to costumes.
The shop has both natural light as well as balanced illumination. There are cutting tables at the center with sewing-machine stations and two sergers around the sides of the room. Immediately next to the construction space is the laundry, so some maintenance can be carried out during regular class hours.
Conveniently located down the hall about 12 feet is one of the costume storage rooms as well as a craft shop, and 35 feet across the orchestra pit is a second costume storage space containing much of the department stock. These spaces are also within a hall’s length of the principal rehearsal space, so fittings are accomplished with ease during early rehearsals.
Other Class Spaces
Greensboro College Theatre students also utilize two drafting labs, practice rooms, computer labs, art studios, and standard classroom spaces in which to accomplish their work.
