Shaw production: a sensitive addition, carefully knitted to a distinguished theatre, provides new facilities and civilized spaces for staff and public alike.

Niagara-on-the-Lake is a picturesque town at the point where the Niagara River flows into Lake Ontario. Set in the spectacular scenery of the Great Lakes near Niagara Falls, the town is the focus of the region's burgeoning wine industry and the home of the internationally distinguished Shaw Festival. The combination of historic architecture (dating from the 1790s when the settlement was briefly the capital of the colony of Upper Canada) with nature and culture makes the town both a popular bolt-hole from nearby Toronto and a destination for visitors from around the world.

The Shaw Festival, started in the late 1950s as a summer event to stage the works of George Bernard Shaw, now embraces a catholic range of theatrical tastes during its eight-month season from April through November. Productions are presented at the small historic Court House and Royal George Theatres in the centre of town, and at the 860-seat Festival Theatre, designed by Ron Thom and built in the 1970s at the east edge of town looking over the Commons and federal parklands beyond. As the Festival grew over the years, so backstage facilities became increasingly inadequate, a problem that has been addressed by the new production centre which serves all three theatres. Designed by Lett/Smith Architects and recently completed, the 400[m.sup.2] extension doubles the area of the Festival Theatre.

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A major concern was how to expand the building's facilities, yet minimize the apparent scale of any addition in this sensitive setting. It was also important to maintain the intimate feeling of the Festival Theatre and the views from its foyers and terraces. Operationally, the obvious place to build the extension would have been at the north end of the site, where the existing stage and backstage areas are located. However, the only available land was the space used for coach parking to the south and adjacent to the theatre's entrance and foyers. In section, because the stage and dressing rooms of the theatre are one level below ground, the logical connection to the new production facilities was at this level.

Above ground, the new production centre reads as a separate pavilion that makes a new courtyard with the existing theatre. Both buildings are entered from a new forecourt and parking area on the west side of the site. The theatre entrance has been rebuilt to house an expanded box office and shop together with a small library, a space for pre-performance talks, and a new meeting room planned in a glassy corner bay. This area has also been excavated to incorporate the critical basement level link to the new building. A more modest entrance to the production centre alongside opens into a separate foyer, which serves the large new rehearsal/multi-purpose room at ground level. Within this foyer, a skylit well with a glass stair provides daylight, access and a visual connection to the lower level at the point where the theatre's existing backstage corridor meets the new building. At this junction, a large new green-room and staff restaurant opens out to a south-facing sunken garden terrace and, adjacent to this social hub, staff offices also look into the sunken court. On the east side of the new building, a sound studio and two smaller rehearsal rooms--one daylit from the sunken garden and the other dark--extend out under a newly created lawn.

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The glassy large rehearsal hall provides a working area equal to the stage of the Festival Theatre. Columns are pulled inboard to create a circulation zone around the perimeter, and adjustable fabric baffles at the column line enable the room to be blacked out, acoustically dampened, and planned to simulate different stage layouts. The space has a lighting grid and control room at high level as well as access for scenery and props from a new loading bay.

Much of the warmth and intimacy of the Festival Theatre was created by its red brick walls, brick pavers, cedar shingled roofs and wood pergolas. This principle of using untreated natural materials without applied finishes both inside and out--which makes the Theatre resonate strongly with the work of Aalto and other Scandinavian Modernists--has been continued in the new production centre. Externally, the rehearsal room is clad with copper to distinguish it from the theatre, while the entrance lobby provides a transitional piece between new and old. A new expressed concrete structure is integrated with brick walls and pavers that are detailed to match the original theatre. The double-height stairwell wall is clad with rift-cut oak veneered panels with the grain running horizontally. Partially wrapped by a reflecting pool and pergola, the lobby is fully glazed on the north and east, with views out to the theatre and the Commons respectively. Used by company and staff, this space also serves as a members' bar for theatre patrons and as a venue for special events.

The courtyard between the existing and new buildings provides the theatre with an elegant outdoor room and new gardens to complement the mature wisteria on the pergolas of the theatre. The threshold to the space on the west facade of the buildings is marked by a covered outdoor walkway and the pavement lights that illuminate the lower level corridor. Small windows to the box office and the new building's lobby are seemingly carved into deep, chamfered copper-clad reveals, both to emphasize the solidity of the brick volumes and to frame the courtyard threshold.

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The thoughtful relationship between the two buildings is a seemingly effortless resolution of complex operational requirements. This is a scheme in which voids--courtyard, lightwell and sunken garden terrace--are as important as the programme spaces. They not only bring daylight generously into areas below ground level, but also ingeniously connect back-of-house with front-of-house, and old with new. The simple strategy of designing circulation so that one is always walking toward views of landscape--both natural and designed--humanizes the typically dark, maze-like backstage spaces of the theatre. Combining the green-room and restaurant provides company and staff with a much-needed place to meet, talk and socialize informally. Unlike the many recent buildings that call for attention, the new production centre is quiet and understated, allowing the Festival Theatre to continue to play the starring role, while at the same time providing fine new facilities for staff and public alike.