Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Performing arts center in Cobb County, Georgia
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre is a performing arts venue in Cobb County featuring a 2,750-seat theater with advanced sound equipment and flexible stage setups for different types of shows. The facility also includes a ballroom space alongside the main performance areas.
The venue opened on September 15, 2007, with a concert by Michael Feinstein and Linda Eder. The $145 million project took over two years to build. Naming rights were sold for $20 million to Cobb Energy Management Corp., and developer John A. Williams donated $10 million, so the main theater bears his name.
The Atlanta Opera moved here from the Atlanta Civic Center, and its first production in the building was Puccini's Turandot. The centre is also home to Atlanta Ballet and the ArtsBridge Foundation. The John A. Williams Theatre was designed to attract touring Broadway companies, and its lobby holds Jimmy O'Neal's mural The Nine Muses.
The venue sits at the east corner of Akers Mill Road and Cobb Galleria Parkway, overlooking I-75 just south of the I-285 interchange. An adjoining parking deck holds 1,000 spaces. The John A. Williams Theatre seats 2,750 across orchestra, mezzanine and grand tier, with the farthest Grand Tier seat 160 feet from the stage.
The building appears in the first-season finale of The Walking Dead, its exterior standing in for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also served as the conference center for the KEN talk in the 2014 film Dumb and Dumber To, and scenes for Parental Guidance were shot in the theatre.
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