Time out! Yellow flag! Tailgaters, gearheads and Okafor fanatics all need to huddle up for a reality check: Sports isn’t the only game in town, and the new arena is not the only Grand Opening scheduled for the Center City this fall.
Sure, the new home of the Bobcats has twisted Fifth Street and grabbed the most media attention over the past five years — yielding right-of-way recently to some NASCAR nonsense. But a lordly new Academic & Performing Arts Center is already gazing at the Queen City skyline from across Kings Drive with all the granite dignity of the Lincoln Memorial.
There on the rejuvenating Central Piedmont Community College campus, a gala black-tie celebration will unveil the wonders of the new Dale F. Halton Theater on November 10. Next evening, all the bells and whistles of the high-tech 1,000-seat facility will go on display as The Sound of Music ushers in a new era of theater at CPCC under the direction of Tom Hollis.
Sooner than that, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte has its coming out party at ImaginOn, the pioneering joint venture with the Char-Meck Public Library. The new fantasy palace, straddling Sixth and Seventh Streets, throws open its doors from 10am to 4pm on Saturday, October 8.
Citizens who attend this festive Grand Opening will awaken to the reality that Charlotte has moved to the head of class among innovative educational projects across the nation. They’ll also get a golden opportunity to tour two new theaters.
Stretching across the spacious ImaginOn lobby, a long gently sloped ramp — wide enough for two motorcyclists or three baby strollers — leads up to the McColl Family Theatre. If Children’s Theatre’s knack for sellouts carries over from its old palace on Morehead Street, 570 enchanted parents and children will be seated for each performance. Tucked away in the opposite end of ImaginOn, the Wachovia Playhouse is a beautiful little gem of a space with a thrust configuration and 250 seats. In five merry colors.
Two of the company’s platinum oldies will bring the curtain up at the ImaginOn theaters. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens at the McColl on October 14, with artistic director Alan Poindexter revisiting the C.S. Lewis classic, and the Tarradiddle Players unearth The Velveteen Rabbit at the Wachovia two weeks later.
Bringing The Mountain
Well, even if I’ve been a card-carrying Loafer for over 18 years, I wasn’t going to wait until October for my first peep at Charlotte’s newest theaters. I invited myself over to both CP and ImaginOn earlier this month. Hollis and Poindexter were more than eager to give me the tour, as proud as first-time parents and as gleeful as playmates.
After chewing on the well-publicized demise of Charlotte Repertory Theatre for over five months, I admit to feeling buoyed by the balm offered by the Halton, the McColl and the Wachovia — and hopeful that promising seeds for the future will sprout in these playgrounds. Susan Knowlson and Patrick Ratchford, who will star at the Halton as the preternaturally perky Maria and the terminally sober Captain von Trapp, eagerly took up my invitation to see the new hall for the first time.
Both were inclined to accentuate the positive. With good reason. While other Charlotte theater dreams have withered and died, theirs have blossomed. A year ago, Knowlson and Ratchford launched the fall season at CP’s panoramic Pease Auditorium in The Last Five Years. Accompanied by a five-piece band, they played to small but enthusiastic crowds on a shoestring budget — carrying the entire show on their able shoulders.
Now they’re at the center of history, starring in what promises to be a lavish production, surrounded by a stage full of nuns and kids and villagers, accompanied by two dozen musicians, facing a packed house.
“I knew it was big,” says Knowlson, marveling at the new hall. “I didn’t know it was going to be so pretty. It’s very traditional, which I love. I think The Sound of Music is going to be a great opening for this theater. There definitely is still theater going on. I feel so blessed and lucky to be able to do such contrasting pieces within almost a year. And I know everyone is not as lucky, but I can’t imagine being more fulfilled by two pieces of theater. Both dreams for me. I have had an amazing year. So I cannot complain at all.”
“There’s plenty of theater going on,” Ratchford chimes in. “No one can say there’s nothing to do in this town as far as auditioning for shows or going to see them. This past week at City Stage, they were packed. We’re finally able to sustain Forever Plaid downtown, Menopause is still doing well. So I think that says something for the folks in Charlotte, that they’re ready to get out and support theater.”
After 32 years in a space originally designed as a teaching auditorium, CP’s Theatre Department will be performing at a genuine theater for the first time. Same goes for Children’s Theatre. During their 58-year history, they’ve been tethered to a converted VFW Post, only recently breaking loose and tenanting Spirit Square — in a space originally designed as a chapel.
The parallels don’t end there. When Sound of Music and Lion/Witch premiere, both new stages will be teeming with kids. Both productions will also bid grateful good-riddances to set designs constricted by squat 12-foot ceilings.
Hollis has no doubt been involved with some of the oddest mutants at Pease, which include pancake editions of such two-storey farces as Rumors, Noises Off and The Foreigner. Surveying his new spacious domain, he’s somewhat cautious in his euphoria.
“It’s going to be a challenge for all of us,” Hollis points out, “building scenery at this scale, having more than 12 feet of height. When we climb a mountain in here, we’re truly going to climb a mountain! The Sound of Music was the first show Summer Theatre ever did 32 years ago. So we thought it was appropriate, as we make this step, to go back and look it over.”
Down in the orchestra pit, there will be more musicians than in many Broadway shows.
“We’re going to have 24 pieces in the pit for The Sound of Music,” Hollis exults. “That’s what the show was written for. In Pease, I would be lucky if I could get half that many in the pit comfortably. We’d probably have to substitute keyboards for a variety of instruments. We’re going to get the full sound as the show was written.”
The Wow Factor
Over at ImaginOn, musicals aren’t primary weapons in the Children’s Theatre arsenal — yet. The new McColl is equipped with the first orchestra pit the company has ever known, and it will accommodate 20 musicians.
But of course, Children’s Theatre’s forte has always been in the magical realm of technical theater. No less than 36 of our Charlotte Theatre Awards have gone to CT’s tech whizzes during the Loaf Era, an average of two a year. In ImaginOn, that dominance is likely to become stronger. Up in the control booth at the McColl, the 400-channel control board commands 336 dimmer elements. Down in the Wachovia, you’re making do with 250 channels and a mere 216 dimmers.
On Morehead Street, the company was such a busy hive of teaching and creativity that few realized how scattered their tech resources were, with a set shop over on Hawthorne Lane and a costume shop on The Plaza — in an old gas station. Now all of their resources are marshaled under one roof.
“As an organization,” Poindexter proclaims, “we’re getting ready to take a large step in who we are in this community — at least in the public’s perception of the work that we do. This facility provides us with a place to showcase our work in a way that we’ve never been able to before. I think it sets a new precedent for theatrical design in this city.”
Toss in the active partnership with the Library, and you’re looking at a facility that may very well be destined for national leadership and acclaim. In the synergy of ImaginOn, the Library enriches the theatrical experience and the Theatre adds a fresh spark to the books on the shelves. Together, they will attempt to foster a literate theater audience — almost from the cradle.
ImaginOn comes our way just two years after the Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis won the regional Tony Award. Educators and theater artists are now more alert to the possibilities.
“There are now several graduate programs across the country that have recognition for turning out really strong graduates in the field of theater for youth,” Poindexter reveals. “It’s really a growing phenomenon. I think the theater community in general understands that if you’re going to build an audience, you don’t wait to capture them once they’ve graduated from high school. You capture them from the outset. We and our partners in the Library wanted this to be an interactive facility, full of energy. There are going to be no librarians in this library telling people to be quiet.”
Poindexter envisions ImaginOn as a model that will be emulated across the country. Yet he admits that the impressiveness of the place — you can’t walk in without going wow! — places an extra onus on the creative team.
“Audiences will need to walk into the theater…,” I begin.
“…and have that wow factor redouble itself,” says Poindexter, completing my thought. “Yeah, it’s something that we think about. We’ve got to equal that in the theatrical spaces and through the productions.”
The wow factor is one of the key reasons why Children’s Theatre is opening with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which garnered four CL Theatre Awards for the company back in 1992.
More to Shout About
Of course, the wow factor is a time-honored ingredient in many of the shows that Charlotte performing arts groups choose to lead off their new seasons. With Charlotte Shout ballyhooing anything and everything cultural that moves throughout September — and perfuming the air with brews and barbecue — the mandate to dazzle has almost become a gospel creed as soon as the sun sets on Labor Day.
Even though they’ve discarded their traditional gala, Charlotte Symphony is opening its Classics Series with two guest soloists, Tai Murray and Nokuthula Ngwenyama, performing Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante (September 16-17), foreshadowing an all-out celebration of Wolfie’s 250th birthday later in the season. North Carolina Dance Theatre breaks out of the gate with a celebration of classic Tchaikovsky ballets, skimming from Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty and tossing in some Balanchine for good measure (September 22-24).
Opera Carolina isn’t banging down the doors with a herd of old warhorses like they’ve often done in the past, beginning with the Bizet opera you probably have not seen before, The Pearl Fishers (October 20-23), and bringing back Amahl and the Night Visitors for the holidays (December 16-17). We expect the macabre from Moving Poets late in October, and they’re obliging us with a new Halloween fix called Seven Deadly Sins (October 26-November 6). But the multimedia mischief-makers are also getting into the Charlotte Shout spirit with a staged reading of Iago (September 15-17) by noted playwright James McClure, directed by Charlotte Rep refugee Randell Haynes.
Remember when festivals of staged readings were an annual Rep rite? Nobody better to revive the ritual — with a fresh twist — than Rep founder Steve Umberger. The Ubiquitous One returns to us from the netherworld (Florida, actually) as his new PlayWorks collaborates with The Light Factory in “Thinking in Pictures: A Festival of New Plays & Film Scripts” at Duke Power Theatre (November 3-6).
Hey, if Steve has something to celebrate, then we all do. Charlotte’s pre-eminent outsider returns to the holy ground where he launched his Actors Contemporary Ensemble some 30 years ago, reborn as the gray eminence of Charlotte’s fringe scene.
What else rocks on the fringe? Best bets would include BareBones Theatre Group’s Empty Plate (September 8-24), Off-Tryon Theatre’s God’s Country (October 6-23) and Carolina Actors Studio Theatre’s Orange Lemon Egg Canary (October 20-November 12) — if they can pull off the magic.
Of course, we won’t rat on you if you plunk down for a subscription to Actor’s Theatre, even if they have signed on with Equity. Their best for the fall figures to be Bug (October 12-29). If you’re adventurous enough to try the college scene, prime recommendations are An Enemy of the People at UNC-Charlotte (October 26-30) and The Book of Liz at Winthrop University (September 21-25).
This article appears in Aug 24-30, 2005.
