Private Auditoriums

A happy highlight of the 2011 arts scene is the recent opening of Joyden (joy-den) Hall in Capitaland’s Iluma shopping centre on Middle Road.

At a private meal held after the opening event, I learnt that Joyden Hall had been developed by the original owners of Iluma, for their daughter, to manage.  To ensure that the new 500- seat adaptable theatre works effectively, Hong Kong theatre doyen Danny Yung was invited to guide the design process for the theatre. The design development process included a two-year research journey that took his protégé venue manager to performing arts conferences around the globe.  Consultations with potential hirers were also held to ensure that nothing was missed.  Upon the sale of Iluma to Capitaland, the family rented the black box back to ensure that it would be managed in accordance with their original intentions.

The story is a happy one for me and arts development.  Few shopping mall owners who are typically be concerned with the bottom line, would spend money on research before embarking on a theatre project.   Net outcome – a brand-new arts facility for the community! 

In  the late 80s when we were very short of performing spaces, one of my aspirations was to offer theatre design specifications to companies building or retrofitting auditoriums.  If well-equipped, these private auditoriums would complement the few government-owned theatres and relieve the growing demand for theatre spaces.  At that point, some corporate auditoriums were already well-used for arts events but being designed primarily for meetings and talks, they were inadequate in terms of sightlines, acoustics, loading docks, staging, light and sound equipment, and dressing rooms.  One of them did not have a link between the left and right of the stage so actors had to exit into the back-lane to re-appear on the other side while in another, the control room had no view of the stage.

I did not manage to accomplish this mission as no-one including our theatre technicians could draw up specifications to a standard that they felt confident to recommend to corporations and architects.  I realized then that we did not have acousticians and theatre designers.  Either because they did not regard theatre planning as an expertise or, to save costs, architects would design the auditoriums themselves.  The only exception of course, was Singapore Conference Hall (SCH) and DBS Auditorium architect Dato Lim Chong Keat who being an accomplished musician himself, fully understood the importance of good acoustics and drew famed American acousticians Berenek, Bolt and Neumann (BBN) into the SCH project.  Hopefully, other corporations embarking on new buildings would give more thought to this.  Dato Lim recently shared the making of the SCH at a Singapore Heritage Society talk.   

Despite all the efforts invested, there is no perfect venue and reactions among arts companies to the user-friendliness of  Joyden Hall are mixed.  Still, it’s a welcome addition to the inventory of art spaces and  we  hope it can maintain the right balance of arts and non-arts content by keeping rental rates affordable for art companies.  

For the audience, the best thing of all is that Joyden Hall has very comfortable seats.  No backache!

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