The Theatre Royal in Waterford, the oldest theatre in Ireland, has now reopened after a major restoration and refurbishment. Arts Team worked in collaboration with Waterford based Wigham McGrath and Partners and whilst each practice had responsibility for particular areas and aspects of the refurbishment, the project was a genuine collaboration. The Waterford Theatre Royal is a Victorian (1874) theatre occupying part of the city’s Georgian Town Hall of (1875). A refurbishment in the mid 1980s updated the building, but unsightly mechanical interventions and an unsympathetic decorative scheme diminished the audience experience of this much-loved performance space.
Arts Team radically redefined the auditorium. A state-of-the-art performance infrastructure and new ventilation strategy were installed, together with a refurbishment that is sympathetic to the building’s heritage and now includes a degree of neutrality which contemporary auditoria require. This is particularly important for the type of works the theatre hosts and to Artistic Director, Ben Barnes, former director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
Arts Team’s new ‘cross-over’ lobby links the grand council foyer to the 1980s theatre foyer extension. Both were also refurbished as part of the project. This ‘cross-over’ reveals windows that have been block-up for over a hundred years.
