Possibly due to the fire on West Union Street and heavy rain, the Forum Theater has flooded once again.
The Forum Theater in the Radio-Television Building has flooded possibly in part due to the amount of water used to fight the fire on West Union Street Sunday and the rain, said Michael Lincoln, artistic director and division head of the Division of Theater.
This isn’t the first time the theater has been soaked in water.
“We’ve always had leaking problems,” Lincoln said. “It’s like having a building built into a bathtub.”
Facilities has been working since last night to get the theater dried by Tuesday. The division’s latest production, The Cherry Orchard, was set to premiere Wednesday but will be held until Thursday assuming there is not a larger issue, Lincoln said. A Sunday matinee will be added.
Alycia Kunkle, a third-year graduate actor who plays Varya in The Cherry Orchard, recalled the rehearsal Sunday evening and said around 11 p.m. everyone noticed the water in the theater.
“They were trying to block it off with plastic tarp with stage weights on them, paper towels,” she said. “It looked like a game of Mouse Trap with the way they were trying to run the water out.”
The two areas with the most significant damage were the small closet directly behind the top row of audience seating and the vomitorium, a passageway built under the audience that allows an actor to enter or exit the stage.
The overwhelming smell of mildew filled the air. The walls were painted with the dripping stains of old leaks. Rust and what looks like mold completely cover one corner in part of the vomitorium.
Nathan Davis, a first-year graduate student studying sound and projections design, said he is mostly concerned with all of the equipment in those areas, especially the 400-amp tower that currently has a small pool of water next to it.
Davis said he can’t fully assess the damage until everything has completely dried.
Lincoln said it looks like the water is coming from the wall alongside the alley which runs between the RTV Building and Kantner Hall.
A worker came Monday evening to do concrete sealing. Lincoln said it had been done successfully four years ago. However, he said if the sealant doesn’t work, the alley might need to be torn up to investigate the problem further.
“It just keeps happening,” Franny Gallagher, sound designer for The Cherry Orchard, said. “It was like a mini river. … This is the third show in the Forum this semester and it’s the second show that has gotten wet.”
And the constant flooding can only exacerbate the ongoing issue of the rotting stage in the Forum.
Lincoln said they tested the stage recently and noticed the upstage area, which is furthest from the audience, is entirely rotted on the left side of the stage, known as stage right. Sheets of plywood are now on top of it so people’s feet don’t go through it, he said.
“It’s hard to see part of the house leaking and you can’t do anything but get some paper towels,” Gallagher said.
@BuzzlightMeryl
mg986611@ohio.edu
