BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
If is a school or community center, all spaces with a few exceptions must be accessible - pits, stages, control rooms, etc. Generally equipment platforms like lighting catwalks and loading bridges do not have to be accessible. If its a professional theatre or on where only employees have to access those spaces, they must be adaptable. You don't have to have the ramp or lift but you need a plan to have one so that if someone needing it is hired for that job, they can do it.
Besides the stage being accessible generally, like for a performer or tech, if an audience member can walk directly to the stage within the auditorium - a stair from first row to stage as is common - then there must be an accessible route to the stage without leaving the auditorium. Certain existing conditions of an existing building may be exempted (grandfathered).
If you look at a lot of my projects, you'll see not steps. The stage is at ground floor level along with a cross aisle (which might be behind last row) and the seats forward slope or step down, and the seats behind the cross aisle if any step up.
I have on several occasions incorporated a lift where the side or caliper stages were not to be, and arranged the lift to connect stage to first row to pit. Its fussy but doable. And I have one facility where an elevator connects pit level, first row level, lobby level, adn control room level. Drew the elevator first and then drew the theatre around it.
Starting a ramp at the first row to get to a stage in a room with otherwise stepped or sloped seating in my experience never works and is a dead end. A single flat floor room with a raised stage is different.
Theatre consultant Teddy Dean Boys once commented that the requirements for accessibility has more impact on theatre design and planning than anything else for several hundred years, most notably comparing it to the impact of electricity, which I think is less.
I've talked to a lot of ADA consultants and experts. They all have conviction in their views on the law. They must never talk to each other because they very often don't agree.
Besides the stage being accessible generally, like for a performer or tech, if an audience member can walk directly to the stage within the auditorium - a stair from first row to stage as is common - then there must be an accessible route to the stage without leaving the auditorium. Certain existing conditions of an existing building may be exempted (grandfathered).
If you look at a lot of my projects, you'll see not steps. The stage is at ground floor level along with a cross aisle (which might be behind last row) and the seats forward slope or step down, and the seats behind the cross aisle if any step up.
I have on several occasions incorporated a lift where the side or caliper stages were not to be, and arranged the lift to connect stage to first row to pit. Its fussy but doable. And I have one facility where an elevator connects pit level, first row level, lobby level, adn control room level. Drew the elevator first and then drew the theatre around it.
Starting a ramp at the first row to get to a stage in a room with otherwise stepped or sloped seating in my experience never works and is a dead end. A single flat floor room with a raised stage is different.
Theatre consultant Teddy Dean Boys once commented that the requirements for accessibility has more impact on theatre design and planning than anything else for several hundred years, most notably comparing it to the impact of electricity, which I think is less.
I've talked to a lot of ADA consultants and experts. They all have conviction in their views on the law. They must never talk to each other because they very often don't agree.
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