Since 1976, when Spirit Square burst forth like a Phoenix from the shell of the old First Baptist Church of Charlotte, the arts complex at North Tryon and Seventh St. has been one colorful, flamboyantly dramatic, singing bird. Nnenna Freelon and the Marsalis Brothers are among the artists who have brought righteous jazz to the renovated sanctuary now known as McGlohon Theatre — itself named after Charlotte’s most beloved jazz great.
Some of the nation’s greatest rock, folk, and comedy artists have basked in the same special McGlohon ambiance; Eve Ensler, George Winston, David Grisman and Paula Poundstone during the last 15 months alone.
Opera Carolina takes advantage of the sacred intimate vibes at Yuletide, presenting Amahl and the Night Visitors inside McGlohon’s distinctive stained glass. Children’s Theatre utilized the space for Scrooge! and other family fare as it transitioned from its former home on Morehead St. to its new ImaginOn fantasy palace. And before they remodeled Booth Playhouse for Sheer Madness, the Blumie tested their cabaret formula at McGlohon with Forever Plaid.
Deeper into the recesses of Spirit Square, Actors Theatre and Charlotte Rep were born. Alan Poindexter and Innovative Theatre came in from the wilds of the long-gone Pterodactyl Club to Uptown respectability at Spirit Square, first upstairs at the Acting Studio and then at the cushier space now known as Duke Power Theatre.
The Light Factory has grown to national prominence in the galleries that face away to College Street, and numerous organizations occupy classroom, exhibit, and office space throughout the rest of the building. An impressive array of cultural kingpins stroll the lobbies, climb the stairs, and ride the elevators: Northwest School of the Arts, Community School of the Arts, Opera Carolina, Blumenthal PAC, The Light Factory, and ArtsTeach.
So there’s plenty to celebrate in the unique cultural synergy that Spirit Square has brought to the heart of town over the last 31 years. Who can ever forget the joy and festivity that marked the vibrant facility’s 25th anniversary?
Well, uh, actually everybody can be excused for forgetting that. It never happened.
You see, The Spirit Square Center for the Arts and Education Inc. was dissolved back in 1997, shortly after the Angels in America flap died down. Since then, the Blumenthal has managed the space — with varying degrees of zest for the special excitement this special place can create.
Unlike Judith Allen, his predecessor, current Blumenthal prez Tom Gabbard understands both the daytime and after-dark electricity that Spirit Square is specially outfitted to foster and incubate. There’s more programming at McGlohon and Duke now than before, though the buzz of performance hasn’t replicated the dizzying intensity that made the lobbies hum in 1989 after Spirit Square reopened with its first facelift.
What the old bird lacked most in recent weeks — when it seemed possible that she would be slaughtered, cooked, and sold to the highest bidder by City and County government — was a voice of its own, crying out passionately for life. Fortunately, the fledglings of Spirit Square, young artists who take classes at Northwest and their outraged parents, lifted up their voices to the Board of County Commissioners in a public meeting.
During the whole Spirit Square/baseball/land swap flap, the most heartening development was the reawakening and revitalization of grassroots advocacy on behalf of the arts and arts education. Most lamentable was the unexcused absence of Char-Meck school leaders from the fray.
Knowing how much the displacements of Northwest and Community Schools would cost, why did they allow this rancid situation to fester for nearly nine months? When will their vigorous advocacy on behalf of these earnest, talented students begin?
Even last week, when the BOCC rubberstamped the recommendations contained in the PowerPoint presentation by Bobby Shields, CMS had yet to show up and clear their throats. Meanwhile Charles LaBorde, the NW principal, is still awaiting positive assurance that he can count on the classrooms at Spirit Square through the 2007-’08 academic year.
By extending leases to at least Dec. 31, the BOCC offered considerable solace to The Light Factory, Opera Carolina, and the BareBones Theatre Group, the indie stage company that has encamped at the Duke Power since last April. The deal was not sealed for those troubled teens who tugged at our heartstrings on TV.
Now of course, we have been repeatedly reassured that commissioners never — never! — contemplated selling or liquidating the McGlohon. And we’ve been informed that the Duke is indeed a part of the original First Baptist footprint and thus also earmarked for preservation. More than one of the major players I interviewed put special stress on that point, their very insistence that we need to remember the Duke’s protected status betraying a hint of doubt, uncertainty and misgiving.
So here’s a rundown, obtained amid a shifting playing field in mid-crisis interviews, of the current players and how things might play out for them in Spirit Square’s next evolution and rebirth.
THE SCHOOLS
Northwest School of the Arts — LaBorde tells us that NW utilizes seven classrooms at Spirit Square on a regular basis. These include “the education room,” where musical theater is rehearsed and polished; three dance studios, which enable teachers to tailor instruction to various levels of students; and two art studios, including one for ceramics, where CMS kilns are installed.
A full slate of classes operates all day at the Spirit Square satellite, now in its fifth year, with a slick bus operation providing transport back and forth from the main campus.
“It takes five to seven minutes,” LaBorde concedes, “so we lose class time on both ends, but it’s worth the trade-off.”
There is space at NW’s building that might be able to accommodate all these classes — a vestigial cafeteria in the middle of between-class traffic that could be outfitted with a portable dance floor short-term. Still, classes for various levels of dance students would need to be merged into one unless the caf space were redone and divided into multiple classrooms.
LaBorde puts the price tag for such a renovation at $4.5-5 million, a figure that would drain most of the touted proceeds for the sale of the Uptown real estate. Why wouldn’t the County and Char-Meck school administrators see that?
“Yeah, I guess I don’t understand county politics or county financing,” LaBorde shrugs.
The seventh space that NW utilizes at Spirit Square — the photography room hosted by The Light Factory — is irreplaceable, lost at least temporarily in any Spirit Square redevelopment plan that is likely to be devised. Synergy with Light Factory and Discovery Place would stop in its tracks, and plans to develop additional links to Spirit Square and ImaginOn would be stillborn if NW doesn’t figure in the future Uptown footprint.
Community School of the Arts — This nine-year resident at Spirit Square refused to comment in a recent Observer spread on the crisis. Our repeated emails and phone messages to principal Kathy Ridge also yielded no response.
THE PERFORMERS
BareBones Theatre Group — This guerilla company, 2002 winner of CL’s Company of the Year Award, is producing three shows this season at Duke Power. They’re passionately sold on the space if you listen to managing director Anne Lambert, an advocate who compels listening.
“We’ve seen a corresponding 70 percent increase in attendance and admissions,” says Lambert on the Duke’s effect. “For Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, we had our best and most well-attended show. We had more than 1400 people come, and we had gross sales of more than $10,000, which for us is a huge success.”
Any scenario that involved moving out of Spirit Square even temporarily would mean an instant 50 percent drop in attendance, Lambert assesses. But she’s on board with any redevelopment plan that has BareBones back at the Duke at the same subsidized rental rates the company now enjoys, courtesy of the County and the PAC. Especially if that scenario includes a remodeled Duke, which can be tough on the tush.
“BareBones could not afford to stop producing for an extended period of time,” Lambert says flatly. “It would be the death of our small, fragile company. So we have to keep producing in order to keep producing. If we are displaced from our Uptown venue, we will find other places to produce. We’ve produced at the Afro-Am, we’ve produced at Theatre Charlotte, we’ve produced at SouthEnd, we’ve produced Uptown, we’ve produced at a bar, we’ve produced in a hotel room. We’ll find a place to go.”
Collaborative Arts — You wouldn’t think Elise Wilkinson, founder and artistic director of this fledgling company, would be gung-ho on Spirit Square after seeing attendance drop for their first show there. Yet she’s already submitted two dates to the PAC for next season at the Duke (a Shakespearean return to The Green — this year and next — and a site-specific enterprise are also planned).
Like BareBones, Wilkinson is prepared to look for alternative venues. Hey, this is the company that did Bad Dates last fall in a Dilworth condo!
Keeping a sunny outlook on her company’s growth and survival no matter what the scenario, Wilkinson is still disturbed by the obstacles to indie theater that plague the Charlotte scene.
“We have a lack of major individual donors or corporate donors that are willing to come forward and say, ‘Yeah, let’s put our name on a small performance space. Let’s solve this problem. We want to cultivate small arts in Charlotte.’ That’s depressing that we haven’t seen that happen.”
Opera Carolina — Charlotte’s OC has offices at Spirit Square, uses the Duke for rehearsal, tunes up its chorus weekly in the ed room, and does the annual Amahl at McGlohon. While he can’t match the prime location/rental rate equation anywhere else Uptown, conductor and artistic director James Meena won’t lose sleep worrying about whether Opera Carolina will be dealt into the future footprint at Spirit Square.
Meena is very happy with how the process is unfolding — and sagely tolerant of the Commissioners’ cluelessness.
“Every city is like that,” Meena winks. “When you’re dealing with folks in government, who have to be fluent on a lot of levels with a lot of issues, it shouldn’t be surprising that the arts aren’t the one with which they’re most fluent.”
Why should OC worry? Their stake at the McGlohon, Amahl, has gone on hiatus before, and the Yuletide staple will likely return to its current address no matter what.
“A piece like Amahl belongs in a theater like McGlohon, where kids and families can be close to the performers, where the intimacy delivers the performance in a much more impactful way than certainly it would be in the Belk.”
THE ADMINISTRATORS
N.C. Blumenthal PAC — With consummate grace and calm, CEO/President Gabbard has carried out the onerous task of keeping Spirit Square tenants informed of a murkily unclear situation as it continued to unfold last fall. A wily, fierce agitator occasionally breaks through Gabbard’s buttoned-down façade, but never enough so that you’d be totally sure what cards he’s holding or how he’s playing them.
So when he dutifully informed BareBones, Light Factory, and others of the need to make contingency plans past June 30, when their current leases will expire, you might ascribe proactive motives to Gabbard for stirring up the tenants — whose alarm eventually infected NW students and parents in a timely, effective fashion. Whatever role he planned out, Gabbard is certainly pleased with the outcome.
The office space that the Performing Arts Center has at Spirit Square isn’t irreplaceable, and Gabbard admits that programming at Spirit Square is not the financial key that the Belk is. But he has worked assiduously to develop after-dark programming at Spirit Square and knocked down barriers that stood in the way of indie groups using the Duke. That makes the NCBPAC a desirable component in any reconstituted Spirit Square equation — if Gabbard remains at the top.
“As the manager of the facility, we know how many different people rely on that facility,” says Gabbard. “And it is a one-of-a-kind for a lot of folks. So it was really of concern to us to imagine that some of these folks were really going to be without a proper facility to do their work in. What you’ve been hearing in the comments to the County Commission this last couple of weeks is that this is a very complicated situation, short-term and long-term, and we need to think through it very carefully. That’s the key message. It’s beloved space.”
ArtsTeach — Arts & Science Council president Lee Keesler has garnered widespread praise for his impressive advocacy on behalf of Spirit Square’s tenants. But his actions weren’t altogether selfless. Perched above the Duke in approximately 1100 square feet of office space, ArtsTeach is the educational arm of the ASC. So Keesler and ArtsTeach are stakeholders in the Spirit Square outcome.
They serve as liaisons between CMS, grades K-12, and the city’s teaching artists and arts organizations. Drop-in visitors and theater patrons can detect ArtsTeach partnering with the school system in maintaining Spirit Square’s quaint beyond-Crayola gallery, which routinely exhibits some rather mind-blowing student work.
For board meetings, workshops, and professional development sessions, the organization utilizes both theater and classroom space. In sponsoring National Scholastics for CMS, they also avail themselves of the McGlohon.
“What the community might not be aware of,” executive director Deborah Cooper tells us, “is that we are subsidized by the County. So it would be the end of that generous contribution, in terms of that subsidy. We would have to look for space that is free.”
Uh-oh. When the Cultural Action Plan of 1996 gave birth to ArtsTeach, originally chartered as the Cultural Educational Collaborative, the organization was housed with the ASC. So a Spirit Square renovation project could result in ArtsTeach moving back in with Mom and Dad!
Arts czar Michael Marsicano would be spinning in his Mercedes if he ever heard of such an indignity.
THE SOUL
The Light Factory — Along with New York and San Diego, Charlotte is one of only three U.S. cities that can proudly claim a museum devoted to film and photography. Ah, but does Charlotte point to The Light Factory with pride? One wouldn’t have thought so before County Commissioners finally backpedaled and ruled out the possibility of selling the ground from under the museum’s feet to the highest bidder.
“The Light Factory is a spectacular organization!” growls BareBones managing director Lambert, “and I think they have wallowed in obscurity for long enough. We need to shine a light on how great they are.”
Street-front galleries, an idea floating about town in recent weeks, would be a nice start. TLF personifies the variety and synergy that makes Spirit Square so unique. Marcie Kelso, executive director, tells us that two galleries are commandeered round-the-clock for exhibitions. Those galleries double as screening rooms, and TLF also shows films in both the McGlohon and the Duke.
About the only spaces Light Factory doesn’t use — yet — are the dance studios. When you remember those photography classes, serving NW students by day and adults by night, and the organization’s utilization of office space, you get the idea how intimately wedded they are to Spirit Square. They are the glue that holds it all together and makes sense of all the variety that’s there, the distinctive soul of the place. Yes, they’re an arts education center all by themselves.
They are also the poster child organization for the benefits of residing at Spirit Square, in the city’s heart.
“When we left our location behind the stadium,” Kelso points out, “our attendance annually was about 12,000. And as I’ve said before — there are gallery counters on the door, so these are documented numbers — 72,000 people went through the galleries last year. We certainly like to think we keep growing and improving and working toward excellence with our exhibits and our films and our classes, but having a really high-profile location is so important. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Spirit Square has helped us, and we have helped Spirit Square.”
The improved quarters have also improved the level of exhibits that The Light Factory can host. The one piece missing in the puzzle, the ability to show 35mm film on-site, has obvious utility for any developer considering the retail potential of the property.
All in all, Kelso is now optimistic about securing a more prominent place in the next redevelopment of Spirit Square. There were some very anxious moments, however, before the BOCC appreciated her challenges and concerns.
“The analogy I’ve been using,” Kelso recaps, “is we’re more comparable to an oil tanker than a speedboat when it comes to turning. We plan our exhibits two years out, and our exhibits have very specific demands as far as the space where they are placed, and the climate control, and security, and all those things. So we just couldn’t physically find a way to move and still be able to show our fall programs.”
The BOCC turnabout last week didn’t guarantee a two-year window, but Kelso confides that the minimum breathing room she’ll need to preserve The Light Factory’s continuity is a Spirit Square occupancy that lasts through January 2008. That’s just one month past what Shields’ proposal secured — a virtual lock when you consider how long it will take for a County committee to iron out RFP language, gather proposals, and decide on a new course for Spirit Square.
If Kelso hasn’t quite witnessed the onset of universal respect and irresistible goodwill for The Light Factory, her faith has been largely restored in the citizens and the Commissioners, who now seem to be on the same page in addressing the city’s needs and priorities.
“Commissioner Clark was very eloquent about acknowledging that communications didn’t work like they were supposed to,” Kelso explains. “And I think that’s basically what you’ve seen. In the end, it was really exciting to see the process work!”
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2007.
