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Mandell Weiss Forum
and La Jolla Playhouse
Going to the theater should be a ritual, a ceremony. The approach to this building is a gift to the audience - an experience heightened by the eucalyptus grove that defines the site. In the center of the grove was a clearing that became the site for the building and its 270-foot-long, 13-foot-high mirrored foreground wall. The mirror is detached from the theater; it is a floating plane poised against the eucalyptus grove. When theater goers arrive they see their individual and collective reflections in this mirror, and they smell the aromatic eucalyptus leaves. The sounds of dry leaves and gravel underfoot also charge the arrival. There is a true sense of expectation. Passing through the mirror to an exterior courtyard and then a switch back ramp, theater goers ascend, and look back through the looking glass toward arriving patrons. This experience enhances the real mission: to attend the theatrical event. The mirror is particularly enigmatic at night. It can be either a one-way or a two-way system. Depending on the level of light, one sees though the mirror or is reflected in it. Sometimes at night a glowing light from behind the looking glass reveals furtive impressions of movement visible to approaching patrons. The mirrored wall becomes a threshold between the reality of the everyday and the dreamlike, mythic power of the theater. Along the switch back ramp is a cantilevered black-steel landing, which aligns with the main entry road into the campus and on to the Pacific Ocean. From the approach to the building this heavy balcony appears to be resting on nothing. |
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