Everybody knows South Florida is a great place to retire–or at least a great place to spend the winter. But it may surprise those not in the know to learn that, besides warm weather, low taxes, early-bird dinners and great golf, there are some other pretty nice perks of "Gold Coast" retirement living. Such as regional theatre in some very cool venues. One of the classiest of those venues is the Palace Theatre for the Performing Arts, part of the Kings Point condominium complex in Tamarac, Fla. Situated between Miami and Palm Beach, Tamarac is a town of just more than 56,000 that's been voted one of the most livable cities in the country by the U.S. Council of Mayors. The Kings Point condominium complex, which opened in 1989, is a community of 8,000 over-55 residents. Designed for active adults, amenities include a lavish country club setting and greenbelt trails. It's a sweet setup, and, with the baby boomer retirement explosion on the way, it just might be the wave of the future. "The way these communities work," explains Palace Theatre production manager Anthony Ezzo, "is that the builder buys a large parcel of land and puts up condos with clubhouses, and, in some cases, theatres. The builder operates the community until it's all built out and sold. Then they turn the business over to the community."
Designed by architect Richard Heisenbottle and theatrical consultant Robert A, Holley, president of Jupiter, Fla.'s Arts Environments Inc., the Palace was constructed at a cost of approximately $6 million. It's a private venue for residents of the Kings Point community, presenting concerts, lectures, comedians, movies and more. In 2004 the facility transitioned from being run by its developer, Lennar Homes, to its new operators, the Kings Point community. On the schedule for the 2004/2005 season, which runs from November to March, are such performers as Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr., Shakespearian actor Theodore Bikel, Al Martino, Tony Orlando, Bobby Rydell, pianist Peter Nero, Metropolitan Opera star Roberta Peters and comedians Pat Cooper and Nipsy Russell, all artists who play Florida's community theatre circuit.
Production manager Ezzo is a veteran FOH and monitor sound engineer whose credits run the gamut from thrash and heavy metal to Julio Iglesias, Duran Duran, Boyz II Men, Mark Chesnutt, Daryle Singletary and Michelle Branch. He's been with the Palace since 1998, and his enthusiasm for the venue hasn't waned a bit. A road warrior from way back, he enjoys being able to perfect production for the variety of performances that play this little gem of a theatre.
"A friend of mine–Mike McNeil, who worked with Aerosmith and Guns N' Roses–was working in a similar community and he called me and told me about it," Ezzo recalls. "I almost dropped the phone laughing. But then he let me in on what he called the 'best kept secret in show business.' And he was right."
The futuristic, mirrored glass exterior of the 1,007-capacity Palace hints at the care that went into the venue's construction. A grand lobby, decorated in marble, glass and mahogany, greets patrons, who then enter the theatre space with its walnut wood trim and upholstered seats.
"We designed the interior acoustics, the sound system and rigging and the 35mm movie projection," informs Arts Environments' Holley. "There were, of course, budget constraints that we were working under, to design it as a multipurpose presentation hall for the condo audience. Our experience shows us that facilities often get put to many more uses than originally conceived. Therefore, while respecting the budget, we tried to take into consideration that every conceivable kind of show might be presented."
In addition to designing for mixed use, the mandate was to design for an over-55 community. To accommodate that mandate, balconies, stairs, escalators and passenger elevators were excluded. All seating had to be on a single level, with excellent sightlines. To accomplish that, the stage, at 45 feet, was made "wider than you would expect," explains Holley. "The builders wanted a very 'democratic' appearance to the seating, with everybody on an equal plane. To provide a good view for everyone, the audience had to sweep around the proscenium."
The sound system is designed around a central cluster, which, according to Holley, is "the main type of system we do for almost any kind of permanent installation. It also has two side, or fill, clusters. The idea is that you can take the soloists and EQ them through the central system while putting the back up through the sides. Done right, you can pull tremendous clarity on the soloist, and you can EQ the background separately. It's been a very successful approach of ours on a number of projects."
Since all of the venue's seating is padded, the overall sound changes very little whether the house is empty or filled to capacity, helping to maintain a consistent acoustic environment. "When you're building on a budget," Holley explains, "the basic approach is to shape it as ideally as you can, then to ring out the negatives of the space. That means compromises, of course. For an acoustic string quartet, you may have a more dead house than would be ideal. But we have wonderful digital reverbs now, and that kind of performance is only, perhaps, 10% of what the shows are at the Palace."
Aisles are carpeted, but surfaces underneath the seats are hard. "We don't want hard surfaces in the aisles to accidentally line up with high frequency horns and then bounce reflections into someone's face," Holley comments. "The back wall, where the projection and control booths are, is also heavily absorptive. That's key; you don't want the center cluster accidentally hitting the back wall and reflecting sound from behind."
Side walls are curved, convex to the auditorium, "not soft, but with soft elements towards the back where the direct sound from the stage won't immediately strike them." The ceiling over the audience is what Holley calls "constructivist," with exposed catwalks and a network of reflective panels underneath them that distribute sound evenly throughout the audience.
"The idea was to ensure that all kinds of shows could have their day," Holley continues. "The overall reverb time is probably a little bit low. But that's better than having it the other way around. Our obligation was to get the theatre to a middle ground for performances. In addition, it's also a motion picture environment. And of course, the acoustic environment for a film needs to be quite dead so that the director's sonic vision is reproduced accurately."
The house P.A. is based around an Altec Lansing Acoustic Engine, described by Ezzo as "a 15-inch coaxial speaker with a 2-inch horn driver inside the 15. The box itself acts as a horn, so it's basically a co-ax speaker in a horn box. We have them flown in the ceiling, with a pair focused toward the seats. The main center cluster is mono. There's also an 18-inch Electro-Voice speaker, in its own box, flown as a subwoofer. The Acoustic Engines are to the right and left of it, and between them is a little horn that shoots down for the first couple of rows. I've also added two front-fill speakers, stage right and left, at the sides of the proscenium. They help fill in the sound, especially for lectures, to make it feel more natural."
Ezzo runs both FOH and monitors on a Midas Venice 320 console from a glassed-in booth, which creates, he notes, one of his biggest challenges. "The sound of the venue itself–how it's equalized and tuned–is very good," he explains. "But it's a challenge having the mix position in a glass box closed off from the audience. I can open the window a little bit, but it's difficult."
Ezzo resolves the problem by listening in different ways. "All the years I've been mixing music," he says, "I've adhered to what I was taught in recording school. You have to switch between speakers–large and small–and hear the same mix out of each system. At the Palace, I have JBL 4311 control room monitors in my booth. I've also installed a little radio station that I can
monitor. We have a little FM Getner that uses frequencies below the dial for our hearing impaired system. People in the audience who want to use it pick up beltpacks in the ticket office. So I set up a radio station for myself to monitor.
"It's tricky to do, because you have to follow the FCC rules on power. But we found someone who was a legal manufacturer of transmitters, and now we transmit on FM 98.1. Any of our audience can bring in their personal radios and tune in the show or the movie. It was harder before, when they were using the systems we supplied, because they would constantly get broken. Lately, people have been getting their own and bringing them in, and they're thrilled. It works great, and I get to use it to mix."
Three monitor mixes are sent from the Midas console to six speakers: four Yamaha 15-inch wedges and two 15-inch sidefills on stands. "I can configure them any way," Ezzo notes, "but normally I have a downstage mix for the singers, with whatever extra they want in the sidefills, and an upstage mix the band shares.
"To me, it's all about knowing your system and its limitations," Ezzo remarks. "Upstairs in the booth, I get some nice mixes in my speakers and on the radio station. Then, knowing that the sound system is equalized and proper gain structure has been set, I can mix whatever I want and be confident that it goes to the audience properly.
"It really is common sense. My philosophy is that you need to hear and understand what each performer is doing at all times. I don't see myself as 'The Sound Man,' who creates the sound. I don't change the tone, or the drum sound. I just mix the band. Once it's mixed and blended, then maybe I can change the tone and make it better. But I always mix it together first."
Wireless microphones are Sennheiser EW100-series, about which Ezzo says, "a lot of the artists who come in like how natural they sound. They also allow us to run really loud monitors without any incidents."
Other mics are a classic complement of Shure SM 57s, 58s, and an SM87, with a couple of specialty items, including four Crown PCC mics, "a floor mic with a weird pickup pattern. It picks up approximately three feet upstage and six feet in the air–great for opera singers who don't want a mic. You can put it four feet downstage of the artist with the pickup pattern focused on his or her mouth."
Ezzo also serves as projectionist for movie nights, an important component of the theatre's schedule that generally draws an audience of at least 300. Films arrive "just before they go to DVD." Three Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre double 15 speakers, the Electro-Voice subwoofer and eight JBL theatre speakers, along with a CP65 Dolby Surround processor, provide a surround sound system that's tuned by National Cinema Service. Ezzo is, so far, reluctant to go for digital sound for the movies, pointing out that "our audience is older, and the digital information can get pretty loud. I like to keep it a little more controlled."
Obviously, the Palace's tightly targeted demographic audience brings its own set of challenges–and rewards. "Working here is great," concludes Ezzo. "I love it. It's not easy; I have a very discriminating audience. They're people who are used to the best. So when they come to one of my shows, and at the end they're all clapping and saying, 'Fabulous show tonight, Anthony!' it really is rewarding."
