New York City Center–home to many companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Paul Taylor Dance Company, and Manhattan Theatre Club–has unveiled plans to renovate its midtown Manhattan location, preserving its neo-Moorish style, while updating facilities, seating, lighting, and improving sightlines.

Polshek Partnership Architects will undertake the renovation to the venue, originally constructed in 1923 as a meeting hall for the Ancient Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Fisher Dachs Associates, Inc. is the theatre consultant working on the renovation.

City Center’s building was dedicated by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1943 as Manhattan’s first performing arts center. The renovation project will take place in two phases, from late April to September 2010 and then from March to October 2011.

Here’s additional information from the more

Willie Williams is a remarkably calm man, but giving birth can do that to you. We’re inside Camp Nou, situated in a residential neighborhood in the hills above Barcelona, Spain, normally home to FC Barcelona of soccer fame but these days serving as the world’s largest maternity ward for the world’s largest baby. And Willie is sharing details of the birthing process as only a tired but proud papa can.

The more

In a Sunday, May 24 article entitled Setting The Stage With Shadows, J.D. Biersdorfer in The New York Times examines the work of the celebrated stage designer Robert Edmond Jones (1887-1954). The article examines Jones’ designs for a 1930 production of the Schoenberg Opera, Die Glückliche Hand, (The Hand of Fate), in which lighting casts shadows on the expressionistic set of craggy peaks. The drawing pictured in the Times more

Next week I am teaching a workshop called Vectorworks for Theatre. As I sit here, planning out the details of what I will teach each day (the workshop is 4 hours a day for 3 consecutive days) I realize what I am really teaching is a drafting course for theatre. We just happen to be using a mouse instead of a pencil and the vectorworks program instead of a piece more

So this is fun…we’re sitting in the production office awaiting results for the contest. While this goes on, rockin’ cello band Apocalyptica just played as the interval act (they have opened for Metallica–think long-haired metal band on strings). The officials are tabulating votes, giving update s to the live audience as the standings progress. The folks in the arena are absolutely wild…a lot of energy here. Winner to be more