Los Angeles
Times — August 25, 2002
A Bid to
Be Big Stage on Campus
Santa Monica
College bets its theater will be a significant Westside addition
By JAN BRESLAUER
The invites
were out, the caterers booked and the glossy centerpiece—a
poster-sized image perched on an easel—was set up at the host
couple’s house. Dale Franzen, director of the Madison Theater
project, had everything ready for her upcoming party. In fact, she
was looking forward to the chance to thank recent contributors to
the proposed $15-million, 500-seat performing arts facility in Santa
Monica.
Yet the Madison
project’s honorary chairman, Dustin Hoffman, was wary of donor
party business as usual. “Dustin said to me, ‘Let's
not do any boring speeches,’” Franzen recalls. “But
the purpose of a party is usually to thank new donors, so there's
a lot of boring speeches that have to be made.”
 What’s
a project director to do? Armed with a list of donors’ names
she envisioned as the raw stuff of lyrics, former opera singer Franzen
enlisted the help of composer Alan Chapman. “I told him, ‘I
want you to write me a song,’” she says. “I instigated
what I’m going to do from here on in, which is, I sang the
song at the party.”
Recalling
the tale, Franzen can’t resist a reprise.
Bread,
bread
We need a lot of bread…
Theaters are expensive things to build…
And all I’m hoping for
Is 11 million more.
She sings,
in a clarion soprano that resonates through the doors of her office
and down the hallways of Santa Monica College’s Madison campus,
on Santa Monica Boulevard between 10th and 11th streets, where the
theater is to be built.
“And in
between,” she adds, back in speaking voice, “I thanked
all these donors.”
Brava! Apparently
the ditty was a hit. “The next day, the phone was ringing
off the hook,” Franzen recalls. “It’s not like
I’m a shrinking violet anyway, but there’s a million
people out there trying to get at money from the same people. Everybody
remembers who I am now.”
Indeed. While
artists have been singing for their supper for ages, it's not the
usual modus operandi of arts administrators. Yet given the soft
economy and a record number of Southland arts organizations trolling
for dollars to pay for new projects or expansions, it may be just
the kind of ingenuity that’s needed.
The project
is not only on track, it has also gotten to this stage relatively
quickly as these things go. In the works for three years, it probably
will break ground next year.
“Basically
one-third of the money is in, and our hope is by the time we do
groundbreaking, somewhere in 2003, we will be close to 90%,”
says Piedad F. Robertson, Santa Monica College president. She adds
that a March donation of $1 million, from the Santa Monica College
Foundation, brought the funds raised to $4.5 million. “The
total amount needed for construction is $13 million and the total
project cost, when you figure other technologies and equipment,
is another $2 million to $2.5 million more.”
If all goes
as hoped, the theater will become a significant addition to a Westside
performing arts landscape dominated, in terms of mid-size and larger
venues, by the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood and the UCLA Center
for the Performing Arts. Other ventures in the works include the
Mark Taper Forum’s renovation of the Culver Theater in Culver
City, the Geffen Playhouse’s plans for a second theater in
Westwood, and the Skirball Cultural Center’s campaign to add
an amphitheater and other expansions of its facilities. The midsize
options, particularly in Santa Monica proper, are limited. In fact,
although donors and others ask Franzen many questions, the one they
don’t ask is why the theater should be built. “No one
has said to me, ‘We don’t need this on the Westside,’”
she says. “They all say we desperately need this; why wasn’t
it done 10 years ago?”
That’s
what inspired Hoffman to get involved. “In 1956, I was a student
at SMC and took my first drama class,” says the actor, now
in London shooting a film. “Many years later, I was approached
by the college to become involved in the capital campaign of this
new theater, and I was very pleased to be able to give back and
support a school that meant so much to me in my early years of acting
and to help in the creation of a small, accessible theater for this
community where I live.
“The
more theaters, performances, artists, the more avenues for young
people to choose wonderful, productive alternatives that will enhance
their lives and the lives of the whole community,” he adds.
“Here in Los Angeles we are coming into our own, culturally,
and realizing how theaters in every community should be the norm,
the way it is in Europe.”
Many people
who live on the Westside are interested in the performing arts,
but not all of them are eager to travel downtown or elsewhere. “I
don't mind driving to get to the opera or the symphony. But a lot
of people, unless you make it very accessible, will not participate,”
says Robertson. “This is a project that has the ability to
have an impact on this community for generations to come.”
The Madison
site consists primarily of a former elementary school built in the
1920s and a large parking lot. “Believe me, that is the crux
of the project,” Franzen says. “Parking was everything-parking
and ladies’ bathrooms.”
When Robertson,
former secretary of education for Massachusetts, came to Santa Monica
College in 1995, the Madison site had fallen into disrepair. “We
spent $4.5 million bringing Madison up to code,” she recalls.
“When we looked at the auditorium, built in the 1920s, it
needed so much work that we just decided that we can’t do
anything here.”
Franzen, who
performed in many productions with Los Angeles Opera during her
singing days, had been exploring new career paths. In the late ’90s,
she was a consultant to Santa Monica College on the creation of
the Academy for Entertainment and Technology, a campus dedicated
to classes for those who want to work in the entertainment industry.
Robertson
asked Franzen to develop a vision for the Madison site. “I
remember Dale standing up on the auditorium stage and starting to
sing,” says Robertson, recalling their first visit to the
now-shuttered auditorium. “The two of us are a little bit
crazy, so it was a perfect combination.”
Franzen began
by musing on her own experience. “I started to think about
what is missing in this community,” says Franzen, who lives
in Topanga Canyon and is married to attorney Don Franzen. “My
kids went to the Santa Monica school district until we moved out
of Santa Monica, and I began to think about what was I missing here
as a parent, as a community member.”
She started
researching other arts facilities, including New York’s 92nd
Street Y, a multiuse cultural arts and education center, which proved
a key inspiration. “We began to think of this as a small visual
and performing arts center,” she says.
“Out
of that initial idea, the theater was one component, and very quickly
after that, the college decided to move the art gallery that was
on the main campus over here to enrich that idea. And the latest
idea is that they’re going to move parts of the music department
here.”
The theater
component will be high profile by virtue of Hoffman’s involvement.
The Santa Monica College alumnus intends to form a resident theater
company at Madison that will offer two productions a year, each
running six to eight weeks. Hoffman is partnered in the venture
with theater producer Ron Kastner, whose credits include “Angels
in America” and revivals of “The Real Thing” and
“True West.”
Plans for
the theater have drawn praise and support from an impressive array
of arts stars, including Los Angeles Opera artistic director Plácido
Domingo, dancer-choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov, actors Edward
James Olmos and John Lithgow, and opera singers Marilyn Horne and
Frederica von Stade.
In the interest
of drawing more attention to the project, Franzen didn’t wait
to have a building before she started programming free performances
at the site. Shows have included artists as varied as African musician
Prince Diabaté, singer Lila Downs, tap dancer Mark Mendonca,
dancer-choreographer Lula Washington, L.A. Philharmonic’s
brass trio and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
This fall
will mark the fourth year of free concerts, in addition to other
programs at Madison. “We’re doing this miniRussian festival
where we’re bringing a young curator of an art gallery in
St. Petersburg to do an exhibit in our art gallery in January, and
then we’re going to tie it in with some lectures and perhaps
a reading of a new play, and Russian singers will also do a concert.”
Because opera
remains Franzen’s first love, she launched a youth opera camp
in collaboration with Los Angeles Opera. The two organizations will
also team up to present a children’s opera this fall.
“We’re
going to be premiering a new piece that Los Angeles Opera’s
doing based on ‘Girl of the Golden West,’” she
says, referring to the Puccini opera that will open the Los Angeles
Opera season on Sept. 4. “‘Girl of the Golden West’
is not only about California, it’s about the Gold Rush, and
the Gold Rush is fourth-grade curriculum in the public school system.”
With fund-raising
and programming moving forward, all that was needed was the building.
Santa Monica architect Renzo Zecchetto, whose designs include the
$78-million California Center for the Arts in Escondido, was hired
to design the theater.
A primary
goal was making the building accessible. Easy parking is key, but
there’s more to it than that. “On the Westside there’s
nothing of this sort that is easy to come to, that is accessible,
where you would park, go a few steps and be greeted by this nice
outdoor experience,” Zecchetto says.
“Those
who come to the theater would park quickly and walk to the entry
garden. We have a circulation path where the elderly and those in
wheelchairs or whoever can be dropped off. Normally, you have to
go through the subterranean parking experience, and you have to
work hard to undo that negative. Access is a critical component
of the success of this.”
Although considerable
thought was given to accessibility, the interior design also posed
challenges. Because the theater will present a range of performing
arts, the acoustics had to be variable.
“Of all
of our parameters, acoustical ones took precedence,” Zecchetto
says. “So the visuals are acoustic. We invented what we call
this orange-peel, layers of double curving walls that reflect sound
in particular ways, for the musicians and the audience. We’re
trying to create an atmosphere where the room remains the same visually,
so we have these, layers where we conceal things. We placed lighting
and other needs of the theater in such a way where they’re
integral to the design. You don’t have the architecture, the
acoustics and the lighting: It’s all one thing.”
The facility
will have to accommodate not only a range of art forms, but also
the needs of Santa Monica College’s curriculum. The college
will use the theater 35% of the time. It will serve as an educational
facility Monday through Thursday mornings, and be used as a lecture
hall Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
That will
still leave plenty of room for Franzen’s programming. She
anticipates relying mostly on presenting rather than producing,
at least initially. “The first three years, I’ll start
with 15% to 20% producing because I’m assuming that it’s
going to take me the first year or two just to get my feet off the
ground,” she says. Finding the artists won’t be a problem.
There are more performers in search of venues than venues in search
of performers. “There are many excellent companies right now
that are performing in much smaller venues,” Franzen says.
“They’re ready to make a step to a larger venue, but
they don’t have the internal nonprofit support.”
It’s
a step up for Franzen too, from on stage to offstage, from being
responsible for her own performance to supporting the work of many
performers, She views her new role as an opportunity to give back
not only to the communities of L.A. and Santa Monica, but also to
the community of artists.
“In the
climate we’re about to go into, for at least the next two
years, the nonprofits in the city will have even less money,”
she says. “One of the things I can do is pull up the slack
there. I feel like my passion for that aspect of this job is because
I worked in that world.”
Jan Breslauer
is a regular contributor to Calendar.
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