Maintenance Issues, Damages, Widespread in Theater Building

Bellarmine’s theatre building is one of several campus structures built in the 1980s undergoing structural and maintenance issues.

Associate professor of theatre Megan Burnett said the whole building has faced challenges in its space, which includes the Black Box Theater and Cralle Theater.

Acting, movement, voice and stagecraft classes are taught in the Black Box Theater. Burnett said there have been frequent leaks in front of the upper-level constructed sound booth and lightboard. She said the university has contracts with different roofing companies who often come out and will assess the issues in dry and wet times to see what’s happening.

She said efforts are made to stop the leaks for a while, but the department has to keep an eye on the area during heavy rainfalls. When leaks occur, Burnett said a call is sent out to maintenance.

“The maintenance staff is great about coming out and addressing our concerns,” she said. But she said most of the time, the leaks and damages are repaired, “kind of like patchwork.”

Jeff Dean, the assistant vice president of facilities management, said he was aware the theatre building had small leaks last year. He said the building has three sections of roof, and the middle section was replaced in October 2020.

The upper section required a small repair earlier this year, and the gable section of the roof has posed no problems, he said.

He also said a roof drainpipe in the building was repaired in the summer of 2021.

Burnett said there was a leak outside of the electrical room and she had to place buckets and towels to catch the water and made students aware of what was happening and to keep them away from problem areas.

“If you have leaks in a space that is occupied by people, there is potential of an accident happening, especially when there’s electrical wires and stuff involved,” she said. “You never know what would happen.”

The Black Box Theater does have a fire-retardant system, specifically in the electrical room, to keep students safe if something does happen.

She said the university has brought out inspectors and fire marshals to ensure the safety of the space.

The Black Box Theater started out as a chapel and the space was turned into the theater space many years ago. Burnett said over the years, maintenance has installed electrical outlets and other things to make the space safe.

“The maintenance staff, the electricians and the people who build things put this up for us, so they’re really very much interested in making sure we have a safe space,” she said. “They do their best, and they’re very gracious about working in our space.”

Burnett said the Black Box theater also “desperately” needs storage space to store mats, seating and other essentials.

She said, “It’s really interesting to build a building and put a name on a classroom, but who wants to put a name on a storage room?”

The theater also needs a bigger scene shop space with a full costume space, she said.

Behind the Black Box Theater is an underground space that leads to Frazier Hall and to the music department. The area has experienced frequent flooding, with up a few inches of water covering the floor in heavy rains. Burnett said the department has had to put down planks or bricks so people can walk through the area during the flooding.

Dean said the tunnel had an issue last year with ground water but that was repaired in the spring 2021 semester by BDry waterproofing systems.

Dean said, “We have not had any issues with water infiltration in the tunnel below Wyatt Hall since the waterproofing repairs.”

Cralle Theater is a space used for music classes, ensembles, choruses, lectures and musical rehearsals.

Burnett said the flooring was repaired recently because tiles were coming up.

She also said the lighting system is old, and a newer lighting system would cost more than $250,000.

“That’s a grant, a huge donation, so do we really want to put that kind of money into a building of this stage?” Burnett said.

Burnett said half of the dimmers on the lighting system don’t work, which means the department has less capacity for the number of lights they can use.

“There are dimmer towers I’ve seen over at Presentation Academy downtown that are just amazing and it’s very compact… but I don’t know what it would cost because doing that means we have to look at the electrical system, too,” she said.

There’s also very little backstage space to store props and essentials when the department is staging a production.

Despite the challenges in the Cralle and the Black Box theaters, Burnett said the thing about the performing arts is the ability to adapt and to find a way.

She said, “We’re very good at that.”

Burnett said the university officials are doing what they can with the resources they have and the priorities that have been set.

“We as faculty and staff we may complain about this or that and we get on with our business and we work around it,” she said.

Senior theatre major Logan McNeeley said the hardest thing for a student is seeing Bellarmine spend its money on newer facilities rather than addressing the facilities the university has and upgrading them.

He said, “We have addressed those concerns several times, and I just feel like it has never been fully addressed, or at least there has not been a plan set in motion to fix said mistakes, so I just wish that there was more initiative for students that aren’t always seen.

“But at the same time, we need to think about bringing everyone into that rather than leaving people behind, which I think Bellarmine is all about the sense of community, so it’d be great if all of us can reach towards that evolution rather than just one group.”

Burnett said the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Mary Huff, asked the fine and performing arts and communication departments to come up with potential comprehensive campaigns for the future.

She said her department talked about the idea of completely renovating the theatre building to turn the rooms into true theatre spaces, and even possibly renovating Frazier Hall to include a ceiling which connects the theatre and communication building.

Burnett said another idea involves building a whole new performing arts center that could draw attention from the city and surrounding region by having spaces for coffee shops, cafes and things of that nature.

“Having those possibilities to dream about helps our psyche,” she said. But she said it’s also important to speak the truth, and the truth is the university works hard to try to fix things, but “some things aren’t fixable anymore.”