The
Stage Prepares to Raise Curtain, Money |
By Lookout Staff
November 6 -- After unveiling its new $45 million “global
theater” set to open next spring, Santa Monica College is
looking for donors who can give anything from $5,000 to $20 million
to help run what the college hopes will be a world-class stage.
Envisioned as a “global theater,” The Stage plans to bring renowned
artists to the state-of-the-art venue, which also will serve as a “laboratory
of creative spontaneity,” where performing artists can nurture new work,
said Dale Franzen, who is leading the fundraising effort.
“When people like Placido Domingo and Dustin Hoffman walk through, their
eyes bug out,” said Franzen, an opera singer turned artistic director.
“It actually turned out better than I dreamed. I think the impact this
will have on the Westside will be huge.”
“The Westside of Los Angeles has never had anything of its kind,”
said Dustin Hoffman, an Academy award winning actor and chairman of the theater’s
Artistic Advisory Board.
“What makes it unique is that it’s a stage for dance, opera and
musicals,” Hoffman said. “It’s also an intimate theater and
it looks great.”
With construction of the theater -- which was bankrolled with $40 million in
local bond money and $5 million from private donors -- behind them, officials
of the theater are now raising money for programming and to run the facility.
“We’re trying to develop an endowment,” Franzen said. “We’re
selling off naming opportunities.”
The naming opportunities include everything from a balcony chair for $5,000
to performance underwriters for $50,000 to $100,000 to the entire balcony for
$150,000.
The naming opportunity for the west Garden terrace goes for $250,000, the entry
garden court for $500,000 and the lobby for $1 million. The naming opportunity
of the second, smaller space goes for $2 million and the main theater for $10
million.
For $20 million The Stage, the second space and the performance series will
all be named after the donor.
The new theater at Santa Monica Boulevard and 11th Street provides the sweeping
stage and proscenium of a large hall that can accommodate a full orchestra,
while maintaining the intimate immediacy of a 499-seat venue, theater officials
said.
Designed by Santa Monica-based architect Renzo Zecchetto, The Stage incorporates
an aesthetic and technological “wish list” from the Building Committee
comprised of performing arts cognoscenti including Hoffman and more than half
a dozen luminaries from LA’s performing arts scene.
The result is an intimate world-class venue inspired by Italy’s ‘horseshoe’
opera houses that allows every member of the audience to make eye contact with
performers during presentations on a grand scale.
“I do not think there is another performance space in the United States
with these characteristics,” Zecchetto said.
The structure also takes advantage of Santa Monica’s climate, featuring
a soaring lobby designed to capture ocean breezes.
Artistically, the stage will serve as an incubator for collaboration, where
artists can develop new work within every performing arts discipline, including
film.
“It will be a great space to explore art and to create a piece and see
it from the beginning to the end”, says choreographer/dancer Lula Washington.
“ It is for the entire city of Los Angeles. The audiences will be touched.”
The complex includes a smaller, black box theater called the Second Space for
young artists and audiences, Franzen said. Last month, the space began offering
free performances in the Under the Rader Series.
“This is not just your parents’ performing arts center,”
Franzen said. “We aspire to create not just performance space
but a community that is spontaneous, accessible and alive, with
all kinds of artists and audiences in intimate relationship.”
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