When the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts opens to the public on Saturday, the city should get an artistic shot in the arm.
It will come not only in the form of a new and better building at 251 N. Spruce St., but in the many professional offerings that the center has spawned.
The center's new Hanesbrands Theatre occupies what was once the AC Delco building's garage. It meets a demand for a venue with an adjustable stage and seating that can accommodate a variety of performances best suited for audiences of up to 300 people.
The performances range from a play presented in a theater-in-the-round format to a dance concert in which the audience faces one side of the stage.
"They get to have a different experience every time they go in," said Mark Woods, describing what theater patrons can expect. Woods produced and is directing Bouncers, the first play to be presented in Hanesbrands Theatre (Wednesday through Sept. 25).
Greater professionalism
Local audiences got a taste of Hanesbrands' potential in August when the Winston-Salem Festival Ballet presented a trial-run performance. Festival Ballet is one of three professional companies scheduled to present a season of shows in Hanesbrands in 2010 and 2011.
The other groups are Festival Stage of Winston-Salem, with which the N.C. Shakespeare Festival of High Point will share resources, and the No Rules Theatre Company of Washington and Winston-Salem. No Rules was started recently by three graduates of UNC School of the Arts: Anne Kohn, Joshua Morgan and Brian Sutow.
The increase in professional performances is a striking development in a city where school and community-theater productions have generally been the rule. It has come about for four important reasons:
• Hanesbrands complements the Stevens Center. The Stevens Center, on Fourth Street, is generally too expensive for small groups and too large or not flexible enough for what many artists want to do. Its calendar routinely fills up with rehearsals and performances by UNCSA, the Winston-Salem Symphony and the Piedmont Opera.
• Hanesbrands is making it relatively easy for arts people with a more entrepreneurial bent to set up shop, offering both box-office and technical-support staff in the price of renting the theater.
Weekly rental rates range from $3,500 to $4,500, with the exact amount depending on factors such as how often a group uses the theater and whether it's a nonprofit or corporation.
"They provided substantial resources for us that we wouldn't be able to do," said Kohn, No Rules' producing director.
• Officials with the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County say that they're encouraging UNCSA graduates to make Hanesbrands a home for productions. Kohn welcomes this development.
"They were sad to see students go away and not come back," she said of UNCSA's supporters. "We were really looking for a way give back to the community that supported us during our education."
• If Hanesbrands has amenities and equipment that professional groups want, that's because it reflects the suggestions of experts who started meeting with arts council officials several years ago.
"The difference is that this time they listened," said Woods, a participant in the meetings. "We really came up with an interesting space. It worked."
Improvements at Sawtooth
The chief tenant of the Rhodes center is the Sawtooth School for Visual Art. Signs of the future started emerging in June when the school resumed classes in the Sawtooth building. This was before the renovations -- transforming it into a sprawling combination of classrooms, galleries, event spaces and the new theater -- were complete.
The renovations, which were started in December 2008, were financed with money raised in the council's comprehensive campaign. The campaign, which will finish at the end of the month, is close to meeting its $26 million goal, but several key requests are pending, council officials said.
The Sawtooth school now has a new layout, new equipment, more and better-equipped classrooms, freshly painted studios and more natural light.
"Crafts have been an important part of our history," said Milton Rhodes, the arts council's president and chief executive. "We're almost doubling the square footage of the teaching of crafts in all its forms, with the newer forms of computer graphics and later techniques in glass and so forth being added to the curriculum. I think that's a big deal."
Thanks to the renovations, an expanded gallery will enable Sawtooth to promote guest artists by showcasing their work before they lead a workshop or lecture. All of Sawtooth's disciplines have benefited.
For example, classes in computer graphics and photography used to be offered in the same room, and the glass, metal and wood classes shared the same room. Now, each discipline is taught in its own room.
Financial hopes
Beyond the physical improvements, there is hope that the center will become self-sustaining from revenue generated from rental fees. The center is adopting a management model that will enable the arts council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to focus solely on raising money and distributing it to arts groups and artists.
"Long term, that's our goal," Rhodes said.
Rhodes has long chafed at the fact that the council manages buildings and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on maintenance. Richard Emmett, the arts council's chief operating officer, said the center would need to generate $900,000 a year to cover the costs of running its buildings.
The council owns the Sawtooth Building on Marshall Street and the Arts Council Theatre on Coliseum Drive. It will take ownership of the AC Delco building on Spruce Street when the council's lease-to-own agreement with the city is fulfilled in several years.
Connecting via simulcast
One possible source of new revenue is when the Hanesbrands Theatre connects audiences to performances around the world.
Beginning Oct. 9, Piedmont Opera will present "Live in HD from the Met Opera." These will be simulcasts of productions presented at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Saturday afternoons.
Piedmont Opera received a $7,500 grant from the arts council to help pay for the simulcast technology. Frank Dickerson, Piedmont Opera's executive director, said that the simulcasts will "help build an opera culture" that attracts new opera patrons and keeps current ones engaged. Tickets for each simulcast are $22, $15 for students. Piedmont Opera is paying the Met a license fee of $300 to present all the season's simulcasts, plus 50 percent of the proceeds.
The Met simulcasts, which this season will be presented in 1,500 theaters around the world, have helped inspire similar efforts by ballet companies and orchestras. Emmett said the center could have other simulcast opportunities in the future.
kkeuffel@wsjournal.com | 727-7337
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