UNC School of the Arts is about to establish a greater presence on statewide TV.
The state's arts conservatory has received a $500,000 grant for the filming of school performances to be broadcast in high definition on the state's public television broadcaster, UNC-TV, over the next five years, school officials announced Thursday. The grant is from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh.
"As an arts conservatory, we are able to share our students' learning outcomes with the public, on and behind stage and screen," said John Mauceri, UNCSA's chancellor. "Creating product for UNC-TV is a natural progression.
"Because of this visionary grant from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, the next five years will be transformative for UNCSA. We are gratified by the foundation's continuing commitment to our school."
The foundation, a long-time supporter of UNCSA, gave the school a $10 million matching gift to start its A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute in 2001. It will now provide $100,000 a year for filming at UNCSA, enabling performances to air on UNC-TV far more regularly than they have in the past.
UNCSA's 2010 production of "The Nutcracker" aired in December on UNC-TV with Fletcher money given before the $500,000 grant that was announced Thursday. Before then, a UNCSA show had not aired on UNC-TV for at least nine years; now, shows will likely be broadcast about twice a year. The exposure on UNC-TV will give the school another tool to recruit North Carolina students and a way to build goodwill across the state, especially among legislators and philanthropists.
One of the next UNCSA shows to air on UNC-TV will be "Oklahoma!" which UNCSA presented in late April and early May in the Stevens Center. Crews from UNC-TV filmed parts of the two last performances in the show's run, along with a private session, to capture bits of the show from different angles.
The aim was to create a TV-friendly composite of the production to air on UNC-TV sometime before next May. School officials said that a $90,000 advance on the $500,000 grant financed the filming of "Oklahoma!"
School officials say that the 2010 "Nutcracker" will likely air in the future but that there are no plans to tape another one. Which shows will be filmed after "Oklahoma!" and when they will air have not been determined. School officials said that Katharine Laidlaw, the school's executive producer, will work with the deans of the UNCSA schools — including dance, drama, music deans — to come up with production ideas. UNC-TV would then be consulted about which ones best fit their programming and schedule.
"UNC-TV has a rich tradition of bringing performance and cultural programming to a statewide audience, so this joint effort is a perfect fit for us," said Tom Howe, UNC-TV's director and general manager.
UNCSA's track record in raising matching funds for the previous Fletcher opera grant appears to have influenced the foundation to give more money, this time for the public TV venture.
The opera grant of $10 million, made in 2001, was contingent on the school raising $5 million for the opera institute's endowment by 2011. Several years went by without any money being raised, and the deadline had to be extended until 2013.
Mauceri told the school's trustees in February that the school had raised $3.5 million for the opera institute's endowment. That left $1.5 million to be raised by June 2013 under terms of the agreement with the foundation, an amount unchanged as of Thursday, school officials said.
"We have been pleased with the steps the School of the Arts has taken to fulfill the Fletcher Opera challenge grant," said Barbara Goodmon, the foundation's president and executive director. "So we were excited when Chancellor Mauceri came to us with this proposal. We are hopeful that our gift will remind the people of North Carolina how important it is to support this great school during this critical time."
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