National Aviary to Have New Kind of Theater

Observing and learning about birds has always been as easy as going to the Northside-based National Aviary, but now they’re going a step further by constructing a first-of-its-kind theater. National Aviary Executive Director Patrick Mangus says the Helen M. Schmidt Theater will host an immersed 30-minute show of approximately 100 free-flight birds. It will be designed with the audience sitting in swivel chairs in the center, and the performance to go on around them, and above them, by using movable stages. The $23 million project will also include high definition videos and sound, and the expansion will be LED certified. Mangus says the former executive director developed the idea, and it goes beyond the free-flight shows the aviary has been hosting for five years now. Groundbreaking is on Wednesday, Earth Day, with expected completion in mid 2010.