I want young people and families to be captivated by awe and wonder, and I want them to have the absolute most arresting artistic experience so that they long to come back here. The Constellation system by Meyer Sound is helping us achieve that dream.”
Christopher MosesAlliance Theatre’s Jennings Hertz Artistic Director
At Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center—home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the High Museum of Art—the newly transformed Goizueta Stage for Youth & Families has been equipped with a Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system designed to support youth theater and orchestral education within a single adaptable environment.
As the largest arts educator in Georgia, serving more than one million patrons annually, including more than 200,000 students and teachers, the Woodruff Arts Center requires venues capable of adapting to diverse programming demands.
The Goizueta Stage’s transformation was informed in part by a multi-year research study conducted by the Alliance Theatre, which found measurable academic and emotional benefits for students attending professional theater performances. The new stage was conceived not just as a traditional performance venue, but as a youth and family performance space capable of delivering an immersive artistic experience.
The reimagined 300-seat theater occupies a former lecture hall known as the Richard H. Rich Theatre. “We had this space on our campus that was just an old, basically abandoned lecture hall that was rarely used,” says Alliance Theatre’s Jennings Hertz Artistic Director, Christopher Moses. “We thought, what about ripping that apart, opening up the front of our building, and making it clear that we produce work for young people and we’re going to do it regularly, consistently, so that the community can rely on us and know that every day of the week there will be something happening on this stage?”
That meant the space had to be acoustically flexible and support fast turnovers, Moses explains. “Symphonic chamber music requires a very different acoustic environment than musical theater or spoken word, and we needed to shift between those needs seamlessly.”
Renovations, led by architects Perkins&Will, with acoustic and theater consulting by Charcoalblue, included retractable seating that allows the auditorium to transform to an open space for galas, community gatherings, and corporate events. But within the constraints of the existing structure, the room could not physically deliver the reverberant support required for orchestral music while maintaining clarity for spoken word and smaller-scale ensembles.
“In its original configuration, the room had limited height and was simply too dry to accommodate the breadth of events anticipated,” says Eric Magloire, Design Principal with Charcoalblue. “The type of acoustic we would ideally create for orchestral music was not physically possible within that volume.”
The design teams determined that given the diverse uses of the space and the required swift changeovers between programming, electro-acoustic enhancement would provide the necessary flexibility without requiring structural expansion. After several systems were vetted, Meyer Sound Constellation was selected, in part because the Alliance Theatre is a long-term user of Meyer Sound loudspeakers and processing in other spaces.
The Constellation system centers around 60 UP‑4slim ultracompact installation loudspeakers and 20 ULTRA‑X20 compact point source loudspeakers supported by 12 MM‑10XP miniature subwoofers. Processing is handled by the NADIA integrated digital audio platform. The system was supplied and deployed by Solotech, a Constellation Certified integrator.
Working within the constraints of the existing structure, the design teams integrated Constellation early in the renovation process. Infrastructure, loudspeaker placement, and microphone arrays were coordinated with architectural updates, and ductwork was engineered for low-velocity operation to minimize noise near sensitive microphones.
“The technology was never meant to be visually dominant,” says Magloire. “Loudspeakers and microphones were considered as part of the architecture from the beginning, not as elements added afterward. Collaboration was key: Every discipline, from structural to mechanical, worked to support that integration.”
The result is a performance environment capable of supporting curated performances from the Alliance Theatre and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Theatre for Young Audiences productions, chamber music, chorus rehearsals, youth orchestra sectionals, lectures, gala events, and experimental programming—all within a single reconfigurable acoustic framework.
Early productions in the renovated space have already demonstrated the impact of the enhanced acoustics. A recent immersive theatrical production, set within an underground “burrow” environment, used spatial sound to transport audiences into the story world—an experience that would not have been achievable in the former room.
Magloire recalls a moment at the opening that affirmed the design intent. “One of the artistic directors gave me a hug and said, ‘As an artist, you don’t know how the sound makes us feel.’ That’s when you know the room is working.”
“I want young people and families to be captivated by awe and wonder,” says Moses. “And I want them to have the absolute most arresting artistic experience so that they long to come back here. The Constellation system by Meyer Sound is helping us achieve that dream.”