College Theater to undergo ‘big upgrades’

Jake Fray
The Advocate

The MHCC College Theater is getting a make-over with GoOregon stimulus money from Obama’s stimulus plan,

“We are going to tear down everything to the bare brick walls,” said theater facility manager Jon Rourke who is overseeing the project.

“I am being contracted out by the school to oversee the project and make sure it is done how we want it to be,” he said.

“Currently on the stage, we have 12 line sets that we use regularly and we are going to have brand new lines with 26 new working linesets.”

Also up for repairs is the old fire curtain that is made of asbestos.

“As we all know over the years, asbestos is not the best thing for the body to be breathing in. So we will be installing a new fire curtain which will be motorized to block off the audience in case of a fire,” said Rourke.

Along with the curtain and riggings, the movie screen will be replaced as well as adding more electric raceways that permanently attach to the linesets to light up the stage with different lighting.

“With the lighting we have, we need to upgrade the raceways by adding in more outlets to light up the stage better. What we have now is nowhere near where it needs to be,” said Rourke.

The project is slated to begin in mid-August and finish somewhere in the middle of October. The school has contracted the project to Stage Services, which will design and remodel the stage.

“It is a big project and I can’t wait to upgrade the theater. It has been very badly needed,” said Rourke.

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