BROOKS PERFORMANCE HALL
CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
CLEMSON, SOUTH CAROLINA

The Brooks Center, with it's adjacent "Black Box" Experimental Theater, Scenery Workshop and theater arts support facilities is the heart of the Brooks Center. The hall seats 1006 including 295 in the balcony. The stagehouse is fully rigged for handling theatrical scenery and the ceiling elements of an orchestral enclosure. Moveable wall towers complete the stage orchestral enclosure which can accommodate full orchestral-choral works or smaller recital groups and solo performances. An orchestra pit accommodates orchestras for musicals and with hydraulic lifts can provide an extended stage or additional main floor seating. In all, the Hall serves the relatively wide range of theatrical and music performance needs of the university.

The finish materials are predominately sound reflective (wood, masonry, gypsum board) with fully upholstered seating and aisle carpetting.An open wood grid upper ceiling with sound reflective fill in panels at the forward (stage) end, along with vertical wood louver fins opening to the side entrance corridors at the main floor and balcony levels adds effective "acoustical" cubic volume to the hall. Two rows of adjustable sound absorbing banner boxes concealed in the truss space and three along both upper side walls permit a variation in the reverberant characteristics of the hall of approximately 0.4 seconds. The banners are fully extended for most theatrical performances and are generally retracted for orchestral and choral events.The Clemson community, after nearly a decade of use, is pleased with the acoustics of Brooks Performance Hall.