Administrators and donors inaugurated the Rev. Royden B. Davis, S.J. Performing Arts Center in a ground-breaking ceremony last Monday, marking the start of Georgetown University’s newest building project. The center is scheduled for completion in April 2005.
According to the existing plans for the center, the building will be several stories high and include a black box theater and a 240-seat theater. Additionally, the building will contain dressing rooms, tech shops, costume shops, rehearsal rooms, study rooms, classrooms, offices for the Program in Performing Arts and two art galleries that will display students’ work.
The Ryan Building, originally built as a gymnasium in the early 1900s, will be renovated to serve as the base of the new performing arts center. The new structure will extend from the back of the Ryan Building, down the hill parallel to Old North nearly to Harbin Hall.
According to Karen Frank, Vice President of Facilities and Student Housing, the project will cost $30.8 million, including all equipment, furnishings, designs, construction, project administration and permits.
The Performing Arts Center was funded entirely by private donations. Nearly 70 benefactors donated money to the project. The two largest donations came from the Gonda Family Foundation and MBNA America.
Student reaction to the building project has been mixed. Many students are still reeling from the inconveniences that construction of the Southwest Quadrangle posed last year. Daniel Mason (CAS ‘06) pointed out that the whole campus was thrown off due to noise and road closures while building was going on. He recalled the early morning noise that he had to live with as a resident of New South last year while construction was underway.
“Students are sleep-deprived enough. That’s the worst thing you can take away from them,” he said.
Jillian Saucier (CAS ‘06), a member of the Concert Choir, believes that the inconveniences of on-campus construction are far outweighed by the benefit of having a performing arts center. “I think it is a long overdue staple of any community that seeks to have a thriving and attractive performing arts program,” she said.
Construction of the new center comes on the heels of the formation of the Program in Performing Arts. The program expects that it will expand greatly over the next few years, according Ron Lignelli, managing director of the Program in Performing Arts. It is already in the process of acquiring more full-time tenure faculty, and hopes to establish a major in theater studies in the near future.
Lignelli expects that the Performing Arts Center will have a tremendous impact on the performing arts department, acting as a catalyst to expansion of the department. “Science majors need science labs, and theatre majors need theatre labs,” he said.
Lignelli points out that students interested in the performing arts deserve stronger support than they have experienced in the past.
Up to this point, students have acquired most knowledge of technical and stage management skills through one-day workshops. With the new performing arts center, as well as the creation of new courses being designed for the theater major, students will have a resource by which they can gain extended experience in the performing arts field, Lignelli said.
“We’re really building an academic base for the co-curricular programs,” he said.
