As the University broke ground on its new $7.8 million theater complex Friday, it was a day for celebration and a day for pageantry – but most of all it was a day for puns about life on the stage.
Surrounded by University students dressed in the most Technicolor of costumes from productions past and with dramatic flourishes from troubadours, donors and University officials waxed theatrical about bringing the James F. Miller Theatre Complex to fruition and praised the University’s long history of championing theater arts.
The year-long upgrade will bring the 1949 Robinson Theatre into the 21st century.
University President Dave Frohnmayer said the building no longer matched the excellence and size of the Department of Theatre Arts program it housed.
“Little has been done to renovate a building for a program that has continued to grow,” he said.
Construction will add a new flexible-seating black-box theater, green-room space for actors in performances, a renovated Robinson Theatre lobby and more space for building sets and stitching costumes – in total more than 18,000 square feet of additional space.
That means that students will no longer find their classrooms doing double duty as performance spaces, and amenities for audiences like improved concessions and indoor climate control.
Freshman theatre arts major Craig Lamm, dressed vibrantly in a costume, said he was excited by the prospect of performing in the new state-of-the-art space.
“This is going to be a really big day in the history of our theater department,” he said.
Theatre arts associate professor John Schmor said that during construction the department would show productions on other stages around town including the Lord Leebrick Theatre and at Lane Community College.
“We’re all set and we’re going to have a blast,” he said.
College of Arts and Sciences Interim Dean Wendy Larson noted the six years of fundraising and campaigning were not unlike mounting a play.
“It takes years of work to move something from the page to the audience,” she said. “Today we’re celebrating the power of theater.”
Although much of the funding was provided by state funds and private donors, theatre arts students also petitioned the ASUO for $100,000 from an over-realized fund to make improvements to the Robinson Theatre’s seating. The building is named for Miller, a businessman and arts patron from Portland, who donated $1.5 million in 2001 to begin the renovation.
Frohnmayer celebrated the importance of the theatre arts program and said the groundbreaking marked a “historic moment” for a school that had long valued the dramatic arts.
The University’s theatre arts program is one of the oldest in the nation, he said, and its importance was evident from the earliest days: The first full production at the University was so successful that its profits were used to offset the football team’s deficit, and faculty and student demands ensured that Johnson Hall, built in 1915, contained a theater.
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