DePaul University, The Theatre School

Schuler Shook planned the two main performance spaces, notably the seating layouts, the sightlines, the stages, and also planned, designed, and specified the technical production equipment. For both spaces, Schuler Shook specified all theatre seats, and staggered their size and placement to ensure unobstructed sight lines. The team also specified stage lighting and rigging systems with a high degree of flexibility to allow for current and future technologies.

The lighting design program includes a large and fully-equipped Light Lab that allows student lighting designers to experiment with lighting angles, colors, and intensities in a highly intensive studio environment.The building includes ten well equipped acting labs/classrooms that also function as flexible performance spaces. All of the grids, curtains, and lighting systems in these classrooms and studios were designed by Schuler Shook.

The Theatre School at DePaul widens artistic horizons, adds vitality to the community, and serves as an important recruitment tool welcoming generations of new students, faculty, artists, performers and audiences for years to come.

The project achieved LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council.

As a professional theatre conservatory training facility, almost every inch of the building is used for theatrical performance and the design team took pains to ensure that most of the large instructional spaces are convertible to performance mode easily and quickly. All of the ten acting/directing classrooms are outfitted with varying levels of sophistication, including overhead pipe grids, curtain tracks, and lighting controls to support small, but adventurous, productions by student directors and designers.

DePaul University first tapped Schuler Shook in 2001 to help develop an architectural program and collaborate on conceptual plans. In 2009, Schuler Shook created the final series of architectural programs for The Theatre School in preparation for an architect selection process for the current site on the Lincoln Park Campus. Pelli Clarke Pelli was selected as the design architect, and Schuler Shook was invited to join their team as theatre planning consultant. Cannon Design served as the local architect and Kirkegaard Associates were the acousticians.