The Guardian reports on an emerging scheme to make London’s stadium for the 2012 Olympic games a portable affair. Post-Olympics, they would deconstruct it, and send it to the next Olympic city host (perhaps Chicago). Reduce, reuse, recycle, indeed.
The innovation is driven by the staggering costs of hosting the Olympics — particularly in capital investment — and the temporary community need for a venue of such proportions. The two cities would share the costs, and both would get a stadium of sufficient size for the big event (I suppose the second city could then put the venue on eBay or CraigsList).
While the technology and design seem radically new, the concept is at least as old as the traveling circus. They called it the ”Big Top Tent.”
A genius concept for something like the Olympics, to be sure, but I’m curious to hear a bit more about how a mobile performing arts center would be used. As a veteran of many itinerant companies making do with renting other peoples’ highly restricted spaces, the very appeal of a performing arts center to my mind would be its fixedness. It could become a part of the community where it was located. It could also be a permanent home for rehearsals, for office space, for storage, for build, etc.
However, if you wanted to do the same programming over and over… maybe you could take it around to all those suburban parking lots where carnival rides appear for a day or two. Maybe an audience would assemble out of sheer curiosity about what was happening outside Kroger. Which is kind of an intriguing concept in itself… maybe this is the way to reach the people who aren’t already going to theatre…
Read your theatre history, gang! Go back beyond the traveling circus tent, which Cirque de Soleil and Barnum’s Kaleidoscape continue to employ, to the traveling carts and wagons that carried itinerant theatre companies from town during the Middle Ages.
Perhaps we’ve become so accustomed to the accoutrements of our theatres that we can’t turn ourselves back in time far enough to enjoy a performance in those conditions, or that our artists can’t exert strong enough control over the elements and our attention for the prospect of performing in those conditions to be appealing.
Hmmm interesting idea, they could do a documentary on the engineering, building and take down, transportation and re-assembly of the structure and do a study on how much money and “carbon” they saved. Could be interesting.
And isn’t it perfect that Chicago will be the second city to use this facility…