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Willmott Dixon has been working around the clock to hand over a part of the prestigious new facilities at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to make way for a world class exhibition.
The landmark £22.5m project, which includes a 450 seat concert hall, a 160 seat courtyard theatre, four acting and movement studios and exhibition arcade, is not due for completion until late Spring. But bringing the Transformation and Revelation exhibition to the RWCMD is a once in a lifetime opportunity so Willmott Dixon brought forward the construction schedule of the Richard Burton Theatre and cocooned the area away from the rest of the construction site. It has now been handed over to the RWCMD which is preparing for the exhibition next week.
The ‘Transformation and Revelation’ exhibition is presented by The Society of British Theatre Designers and offers a unique opportunity for people to preview an extraordinary collection of work before it travels in part to represent the UK at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial International Exhibition this summer.
Neal Stephens, managing director of Willmott Dixon in Wales, said: “The project at the RWCMD will completely transform the facilities and become an internationally-renowned destination for students and visitors. It has been a fantastic project to work on and we understood the coup of bringing the Transformation and Revelation exhibition to the RWCMD. As such, we have been working seven days a week to ensure that the courtyard theatre was ready to handover early.
“The team has created a cocoon within the construction site so as far as any visitors will see, it has been complete and is ready to use and house the world famous exhibition. It will be the first event to be held within the new facilities and will give an exclusive sneak preview of the new development which will be officially completed in the Spring.”
The exhibition, which takes place every four years, is a rare and unmissable chance to see a selection of the most innovative and ground breaking designs for performance realised between 2007 to 2011 by some of the UK’s most talented and prolific theatre designers.
The exhibition will include drawings, paintings and photographs, 3D artefacts, scale models, specialist props, costumes and puppets, and there will be extraordinary interactive exhibits from Lighting, Video and Sound designers, Theatre Consultants and Theatre Architects.
The total number of exhibitors anticipated is over 200. It will include notable designers such as Richard Hudson, Marie-Jeanne Lecca, Paul Brown, Bob Crowley, and Yolanda Sonnabend to name but a few. Designs on display will range from Antony Gormley’s Sutra with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the Shaolin Warrior Monks for Sadlers Wells to Es Devlin’s designs and projections for the Lady Gaga Monsterball Tour. Ian MacNeil’s new designs for the New York version of Billy Eliott will be shown alongside Lion King designer Richard Hudson’s latest works for dance.
The Transformation and Revelation exhibition begins Friday, March 18th – Saturday, April 16th. It is open weekdays from 9.30am to 8pm and weekends between 10am and 5pm.