Pinner’s prolonged soliloquy is hogging the stage from theater students.
Staff Editorial
The courtroom drama surrounding the building of the Valley and Academic Cultural Center predates the completion of the stage and in many ways, the spotlight has been stolen from the people this building is designed to serve.
The sounds of construction have permeated the Valley College campus for years now. The premiere arts facility stacked with state-of-the-art amenities is slowly coming to fruition on campus. The over 400-seat theater, motion capture studio and other top-notch features of the building have been overshadowed by delay after delay — and not to mention an ongoing racketeering lawsuit.
The squabbles are unimportant to students. Whether or not the district will shell out money to construction companies is irrelevant to media arts students who scramble to find a home. Last year, theater students performed their play in the Campus Center because the Horseshoe Theatre theater was demolished. The next slated play, “Middletown,” will take place in the ‘70s era building as well.
Rather than dwell on squabbles between the district and Pinner Construction, let’s take a look at how this building is going to revamp Valley’s campus and change the game for so many students.
The media art’s building features a sophisticated main stage theater, complete with a state-of-the-art sound system, hydraulic stage lift and efficient air conditioning. This will be a massive step up from the theater department’s current soapbox in Campus Center; the main stage theater could be Valley’s own Broadway. Four more theaters will also be available to thespian students: a 225-seat screening room, a 150-seat horseshoe theater, an 80-seat lab theater and an outdoor amphitheater.
A radio station, newsroom, a motion-capture studio and a scene shop will be open to students and faculty of the Media Arts department. Several other rooms will feature smart classrooms, studio rooms, rehearsal rooms and audiovisual labs. These labs and classrooms will be outfitted with advanced equipment that students can use to study and experiment. Smart classrooms house technology like smart projectors and whiteboards that improve student engagement with the teaching material. Audiovisual labs have a variety of uses and are utilized across many different fields for different purposes. In Media Arts, the labs are used to help sync sound and video as well as simulate, encode and transmit it.
With these new state-of-the-art facilities and Valley’s proximity to Hollywood, the nucleus of television and film production worldwide, Media Arts students will have the opportunity to not only gain the necessary skill sets to find work in the industry but also build the relationships that will lead to jobs.