PVCC Puma Press: October 2004

It’s nothing to look at right now, but one year from now, PVCC students and staff will be watching plays inside the brand new Performing Arts Center currently under construction on the northeast corner of campus.

Today, the sight is a mere concrete and iron skeleton, but one year from now, a beautiful dark red building will be home to professor Alan Tongret’s “The World Aflame.” The play is about British Royal Navy administrator Samuel Pepys (pronounced “peeps” like the Easter candy) and will showcase the many aspects of the state-of-the-art PAC.
Head of the theater department, Tongret, says PAC construction is “on track and on schedule” at 35 percent complete. Its grand opening is set for one year from this month in October of 2005.

“Though much of the building will be finished by spring, those will be the hot months with fewer students and less faculty around.” Tongret says. “We’ll use the summer to make sure it’s in good working order. We’ll work on costumes and scenery for the grand opening.”

The campus will have a theater comparable in size to the smaller theater at the Herberger Center. Tongret says it will house a sophisticated sound and light system, a complex scenery fly system, a hydraulic orchestra pit for 25 musicians, dressing rooms complete with showers, a full scene shop, a full costume shop, a large makeup room and a music wing.

The tallest part of the PAC is the “fly loft,” which will ultimately hold 37 line sets able to hold 1,000 pounds each. Tongret says the fly system is “really complex” and will have to be tested and fine-tuned. It’s another cog in a system with special acoustics, sophisticated light and sound and state of the art wiring.

“A World Aflame” is a new play Tongret wrote during his sabbatical three years ago. Its subject, Samuel Pepys, who was responsible for making the Royal Navy the world’s most powerful, rubbed elbows with King Charles II and survived both the great fire of London and the last of the great plagues.

“He was a very connected person at a pivotal point in history,” Tongret says.

The play will accomplish Tongret’s goal of being able to showcase all the arts at the PAC grand opening. Dance, music and even visual art will be represented in “The World Aflame.” A painting, which hangs in London to this day, will be featured in the comedy. The production will inaugurate the new PAC by making use of every aspect of the new facility from the orchestra pit to the fly lines for scenery.

The Puma Press will chronicle the progress of the PAC as it is built. Next month, watch for more on the center’s future and how it will fit into the community.