Theatre arts strong, growing, deserve support

I love that our schools have new artificial turf football fields. We now have tracks that won’t cause shin splints, bleachers that can hold sizable crowds, and parking and fences. We also have a community that comes together and understands how important this kind of investment is.

It is amazing that our hockey players have four indoor hockey rinks in the valley. I remember playing hockey as a child at Iditarod Elementary and warming up in the plywood “hockey hut” around an old wood stove.

Basketball players can monopolize our school gym through the evenings, practice at the Alaska Club and run leagues at the wonderful AT&T Sports Center. Beautiful new ski trails have been carved out at the base of Hatcher Pass, due to the diligent efforts of the avid skiers of our community. Even tennis is starting to organize into clubs here in the Valley and Anchorage.

Now it’s time for the arts to take a turn.

Organizations like Valley Performing Arts, Palmer Arts Council and our own schools are producing amazing plays and musicals.

Wasilla High just closed its first major musical in years, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” with smashing success (and a tenor that rivals most adults in this state, I might add). Colony High just closed its run of “Frankenstein” with the best acted performance I’ve seen on a high school stage. Palmer High has consistently produced equally good drama, especially their musicals. Even Colony Middle School has sell-out performances of major musicals.

The one thing they all have in common, other than producing great theater, is the lack of a decent performance space. Yes, it’s true that good theater can be done on just about any makeshift stage. Take a look at the complex staging the Valley Performing Arts does in its less-than-ideal performance space.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and claim that with all the schools and community theater programs in Palmer and Wasilla alone, there are just as many people doing theater than there are in any other single sport in the Valley.

The time has come for a new performing arts center.

Not a makeshift one, not one built in an old airplane hangar (although Talkeetna’s Sheldon Community Arts Center in the historic Don Sheldon hangar is truly a work of community art. I love that space and it’s right for a community the size of Talkeetna). The Mat-Su is ready for a true performance space that is open and totally accessible to everyone.

True, Mat-Su College is building a theatre. After budget cuts and redesigns, shrunken seating capacity and lack of storage, this space will fill the needs of the college, but little more, I’m afraid.

If the Mat-Su Borough School District built a theater — and the community supported it — magic would happen.

The theater facility could be built between Colony High and Colony Middle where unused and abused tennis and basketball courts erode away, serving both Palmer and Wasilla equally.

Pardon me while I dream a little; the theater would sport an orchestra pit, 1,000 seats, a small black box experimental theater space, a scene shop, costume shop, classrooms, dressing rooms and storage. Yes, lots of storage!

But what would all this produce? Is it just duplicating efforts that we manage to hack through anyway in our alternative spaces? (Even the theater at Colony High is flawed. It should have been built on an outside wall with access to large loading doors, perhaps connected to the never-used wood shop, instead of in the center of the school where all materials we use to build sets are carried in by hand, one item at a time. The theater design at Palmer and Wasilla are even worse.)

No, it is not a futile endeavor. Our little community has produced incredible artists. Graduates from our schools are working professional in the theater arts everywhere.

The title role in the L.A. version of the most Broadway expensive spectacle and sixth most profitable show, “Spiderman, Turn Off the Dark,” is a Colony High graduate. Another Colony High graduate is currently attending Purdue on an $80,000-plus scholarship for lighting design. She produced a portfolio that rivaled many graduating college seniors. (She has already been offered a position in their theater normally reserved for seniors or graduate students.)

These kinds of stories are made possible because our students had the opportunity to learn and gain experience at an early age. Just think of what tomorrow’s students will learn, how they will grow, where they will go if only the opportunity were here. Here, not somewhere else.

Our community is a supportive one. We have grown from a few simple amenities to first-class facilities and programs. And we’re still growing. Now is the time to build our own performing arts center to educate, to entertain, to grow, to open opportunity and to simply add to our quality of life.

Brian Mead is a theater professional turned drama teacher. He runs the drama program at Colony High.