How Jeanne Gang Gave Hudson Valley Shakespeare an Incredible New Home

When Jeanne Gang was hired to recreate the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare company, she had the chance to reconceive not only the theater group’s space, which was formerly a tent, but also the experience of both the actors and the audience. Gang, who is one of the most esteemed architects in the country, has always created work that serves many purposes. With her firm, Studio Gang, she has done projects like the Aqua Tower, an 82-story mixed-use building in Chicago, which was once the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. It was only unseated by the St. Regis Chicago, which was also designed by Gang. She designed the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History, the David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University, and the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Work is currently underway on a terminal at O’Hare Airport and a new building for NewYork-Presbyterian.

Designing theaters gets at the things Gang loves most about architecture. “It’s like what Shakespeare himself said, ‘All the world’s a stage.’ I find I use principles of theater design in planning urban spaces, and for that matter, public space within a public building,” she says. “It’s like, where do people feel comfortable?”

Gang spoke with ELLE on the eve of the opening of the 14,850-square-foot theater about sustainability, the role that architecture can play in social justice, and the impact that a beautiful building can have on a community.

Jeanne Gang.

How did you get involved with creating the theater?

I interviewed for [the job] online during COVID. I was really impressed with the company. I just love theater. We had finished the Writers Theater in Glencoe, Illinois, the Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theater at Rock Valley College, and other performance projects in higher education. It was a nice fit. I really like Davis McCallum, the creative director of Hudson Valley Shakespeare. He was very ambitious and organized, but very kind and really cared about his artists. They wanted to build a better place, a better back of house, better places for the artists to stay when they come up from New York. It also had this incredible sustainability component that I was drawn to.

It was a curious path. Their previous facility was under a tensile structure, and they wanted that again, so we went down that road. But they look similar. And as you lighten the skin, it means other parts have to get heavier. We were getting very heavy steel pipe sections, and it just didn’t feel bespoke to them.

I thought doing something in timber would be more appropriate, so we started to explore that. It was very important that there would be this view of the Hudson Valley. It’s tricky because there’s the view you want as the backdrop for the actors. There’s also how the sun is positioned with respect to the sight lines of this audience. There were some nice challenges, and working together, we solved them.

Are there any small details that are really important to you?

There are a lot of details like how the back of house works and how the paths work for the audience to arrive, but also [the ways] the artists can sneak in from the back and appear onstage. This came a little later in the project, but there’s a perch for actors on the left.

How did you become interested in architecture?

I really loved making anything, tree houses or forts for my friends to play in. Any material, I would start to assemble it in some way. I luckily found out that architecture was something like that early on. But I loved art, math, and physics too. I was drawn to architecture because of this urge to make projects.

Inside the Scripps Theater.

I’m interested in the way you incorporate elements of social justice into your work. How important is it for something to serve the community that it’s in?

Architecture is like the stage set, and it basically gives you [a sense of] how you’re [going to] behave and how you are going to interact with other people. You can make a place that encourages social interaction. The big problem we have right now is the divisions between people and architecture. Architecture and theater are two really good arts that can help to bring together people with different backgrounds, different points of view.

Everyone deserves to have good architecture. I love doing community centers. We recently did the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in East Flatbush. Having new architecture in your community is just something that energizes the community. It gives a boost in ways that go beyond the divisive environments that we are dealing with right now.

I think a community center should be supportive of the people who are there. How do they want to interact and what’s important to them in that space? A public space needs to be more inclusive for everyone. That’s why I like working with places like museums, because they’re for everyone. But some people maybe feel like they are not welcome in a place like that. How can you make those [places] more inclusive and just feel friendly and open?

The theater’s exterior.

If you’re working on a community center or a museum, how much time do you spend looking at the people who use it and the different demographics to understand what actual people need from the building?

It’s very important to do that in public spaces. Sometimes the client is also a partner in helping to identify the groups that are going to be using this. I’m thinking of Memphis and Tom Lee Park, which we completed pretty recently. I’m not from Memphis, but I know who on our client side to get in touch with. How can we work with youth and different groups that we want to encourage to come down to the waterfront?

In the Hudson Valley, of course, [we thought about], who are [the members of the] local community we want to come, but also how can we invite more people from New York City to come? What’s going to make it feel comfortable and reduce the barriers?

How do you choose projects?

Architecture is our medium of art. We look at the project, see what’s interesting about it, if it has the potential to spark change. I really am attracted to projects where the client is also trying to work on change and they’re trying to find architecture that helps them get to a new place.

Whenever we have a new project, it’s like, what are the assets that are already in place? That could be people and community, but it could also be the site and the ecology. It could also be existing structures. It doesn’t mean it’s mimicking it, but really understanding what’s there. Meeting with people and communities, that’s all part of that approach.

When you look at the very top tier of architects, there aren’t very many who are women. Do you see that changing over time?

When I went to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, my class was more women than men, and I graduated in ’93. There are many women studying architecture. I personally felt a strong, strong desire to lead my own practice from an artistic standpoint, from the ethos of the practice. Of course, I don’t do it alone, and I have so many talented people around me, but I just had that strong urge to do that. I’d say it’s getting better, and it’s already pretty good. There’s a lot of really, really great women architects.

The theater sits on 98 acres.

What part does architecture have in sustainability?

It’s a leading cause of emissions. Everyone is working to get emissions down. Originally, [the concern was] more about how much energy your building uses, like heating and air conditioning. Now it’s like, what is it made of and [what are] the extraction emissions that come from those things? We’re using more renewable materials and bio-based materials, and reusing buildings. Those are very major, obvious things that have to happen, as with other industries.

What do you want people to understand about the role that architecture plays in society?

I think architecture is so fundamental to being human. It sets up a space for how we interact with each other. It’s really important for how we live. Beyond just being a structure that you come inside of, it can make a beautiful experience. When you experience great architecture, it elevates your spirit.

That’s why when we talk about architecture with various communities, people light up. They really know what they want to have. As an architect, you can help bring that to fruition. The way that a space can be illuminated with natural daylight in beautiful ways, and the materiality of the space and the form of the building, all those are the things that we work with, too. It’s very basic things like getting poetry out of these ordinary materials.

Another view of the theater.

You just think about neighborhoods that are underserved, like East Flatbush, and what it says to a kid that this beautiful building serves you.

When that [community center] opened, all of the kids came flooding in there and smiling, just yelling, jumping around, so happy. It’s theirs. That’s the thing that is important too. You get your sense of belonging and ownership. Once you have that stability, then you can just go on from there. At the very basic level, without a place to live that is accommodating and nice, then you’re always on your back foot trying to deal with things and you can’t quite get ahead. I think it’s very basic and fundamental.

Are there landmark projects you look back on?

Every project has something I love about it. Of course, working on the museums and the public spaces is really important. The American Museum of Natural History in New York, of course, was a fantastic project that I loved very much. Because I worked on it so long, it’s really ingrained in my experience. A lot of creatively very experimental and technologically advanced things had to come together. It hit all of my favorite challenges, let’s say.

I don’t see our work as a style that just gets repeated, but there’s a certain fidelity to each project and ideas that are original to it. Of course, maybe there are tendencies or through lines in the work. But because we’re working on different typologies, they end up being very different projects.

This interview has been edited and condensed.