Hits: 0
WPCNR WHITE PLAINS STAGE DOOR. By John F. Bailey. May 8, 2003 UPDATED 1:00 A.M. E.D.T. May 9, 2003: City Hall has announced the three organizations, and as of Thursday, a fourth have submitted proposals to manage the new White Plains Performing Arts Centre, being built as part of the City Center theatre and retail complex in White Plains.
Benjamin Boykin, City Council President told WPCNR Thursday evening the council would be hearing presentations of all three candidates on May 19.
A fourth “walk-on” organization has just applied as of Thursday afternoon, which the Mayor’s Office may identify Friday, if Mr. Webb recommends adding the new walk-on to the mix.
A THEATRE RISES IN WHITE PLAINS: View of the section of the City Center where the White Plains Performing Arts Centre will be housed. Two organizations contending to run the theatre are nonprofit organizations based in White Plains, one with lengthy history of staging theatrical productions throughout the tri-state area, the other a new consortium of Broadway producers, performers, and the third is a professional theatre management firm based in Providence, Rhode Island with professionally successful arts centers in five diverse metropolitan areas. A fourth organization, City Hall reports, not yet identified may also be considered pending Duncan Webb’s update to the Mayor’s Office scheduled for Friday. George Gretsas clarified that approval of any organization could not come before June 2 at the earliest. The process of selection sequence is being determined.
Photo by WPCNR BACKSTAGE
GRETSAS: WE’RE WAITING FOR WEBB: On May 19, Duncan Webb, the city’s theatre consultant is expected to make a recommendation, now characterized by Mr. Gretsas as more of an “analysis” of what Mr. Webb has learned so far, of one or a combination of one of the three known applicants to respond to the Request for Proposals, according to George Gretsas, the Mayor’s Executive Officer, shown here at the April 29 groundbreaking for the City Center Renaissance Plaza Fountain. Webb’s recommendation is subject to approval of the Common Council, Gretsas made clear early Thursday. Benjamin Boykin, Common Council President said Thursday evening that the council would be hearing presentations from all three candidates on May 19. Gretsas confirmed the three organizations were going to be presenting in person on May 19 late Thursday evening.
Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
Thursday evening, Gretsas said the theatre is scheduled to open in October on schedule and expressed confidence there was ample time to book the theatre with attractive presentations starting in October. He said Duncan Webb would be updating the Mayor on his research and analysis on the three organizations so far Friday.
Three for the Show
Gretsas named the three already in the hunt as Professional Facilities Management, of Providence, R.I.; Centerpoint Stage, a nonprofit organization involving principals of three major entertainment organizations with a strong representation of New York and Westchester performers, producers, and impresarios, and Westco, the nonprofit theatre group with strong local contacts around the county that has staged productions across the county at local theatres, schools and hospitals for 23 years.
Gretsas expressed disappointment that more organizations had not applied, and attributed that to the economy in the area and the fact that the entertainment business has been suffering.
Gretsas told WPCNR that Duncan Webb, the city’s theatre consultant was currently reviewing the three proposals by the organizations.
Professional Facilities Management: Running the classic Providence Center for the Performing Arts
“PFM” is an established regional arts center operator, professionally adept at programming aimed at attracting the affluent arts aficionado. It manages four toney arts center facilities in upscale, demanding markets: Skokie, Illinois, north of Chicago; Fort Myers, and Coral Springs Florida. They also have managed the seasonal arts facilities in Lee, and Springfield, Massachussetts., and a small theatre just about the size of the planned City Centre theatre in Vail, Colorado.
The organization programs and manages the refurbished (in 2000) Providence Center for the Performing Arts, a grand old show palace of the ‘30s, which seats 3,200 persons. It presents opera, musicals, plays, orchestras, dance, and provides a vast number of community theatre and arts programs to the Providence area.
Providence is a working class city of 700,000 persons with an ethnic diversity similar to White Plains, populated with colleges and a surrounding suburban service area. “PCPA” caters to a sophisticated and arts-centered suburban citizenry, particular in the summer months, drawing from Newport’s summer colony to the South. This month they will present a national tour of Grease,, The Three Divas, Burt Bacharach and in June, Willie Nelson, to name a few of the PPCA acts.
LONG RUNS: Professional Facilities Management runs the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, Illinois, another upscale community that serves the sophisticated, wealthy North Side suburbs of Chicago: Arlington, Glenview, Evanston, and Arlington Heights. Here on the company website, www.pfmcorp.com, are some of the state-of-the-art facilities, PFM manages.
Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
The PFM group also caters to the sophisticated snowbird trade of Florida’s Golden Gulf Coast in Fort Myers, Florida, where PFM manages the Barbara Mann Performing Arts Hall, and the Coral Springs City Centre in Coral Springs, which plays to the eclectic tastes of the clientele frequenting the “American Riviera”of Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, DelRay Beach and Fort Lauderdale.
Providence Group Proposes to do “Programming only.”
WCNR interviewed Norbert Mungeon, Vice President of Professional Facilities Management recently, and Mr. Mungeon told me that PFM did not submit a proposal to manage the City Centre theatre on a day-to-day basis. He said they proposed to “program” the facility for a management firm selected by the city.
Experience Programming a “small” community Arts Center.
Mungeon said that Mr. Webb, the city’s consultant, was familiar with PFM, and suggested PFM put in a proposal to execute the programming. Mudgeon said a 425-seat theatre like the City Centre facility under construction “is difficult to make work,” however, his firm is the programmer for the Vilar Center, a seasonal 500-seat house, near Vail, Colorado, where they have attracted 60 events per year to that facility the last four years at a profit for that facility. Mungeon added that the 60 events include a mix of “local artists and groups” to indicate the firm’s familiarity with White Plains’ needs.
Mungeon explained how the firm consults with facilities they program, listens to “what they would like,” and constructs a schedule according to community needs.
PFM services Would Fit In with Two Local Impresarios
The PFM group could conceivably work with either of the two local groups that have stepped forward to manage the “White Plains City Centre for the Performing Arts” and would book national and touring acts from opera, to musicals, to dance, to orchestras, which they do regularly for their five facilities. The other two would-be theatre management companies do not have programming facilities in place, though both report they are able to program based on their contacts in the theatre business.
The Professional Facilities Management strength is a reputation, and active, effective presence in the programming arena, and credibility. Mungeon said he expected to take his programming need ques from the management selected for the “WPPAC,” White Plains Performing Arts Centre, and felt, with his company’s roster of performers, that it was possible to program the Centre for a start-up when it was still possible to schedule and open towards the end of this year.
Westco Productions of White Plains: Local Thespians for 23 Years.
Westco Productions is White Plains’ own nonprofit theatre troup, founded by Susan Katz in 1979. Ms. Katz has been operating the troup, employing professional actors to preach and present the theatre arts to Westchester and surrounding counties for 23 years. The group presents regular commercial productions, attracting audiences of 35,000 persons a year around the Westchester County area, and is perhaps best known for its children’s theater presented in hospitals, theatres and White Plains own “The Roch,” the Rochambeau School.
Westco is always “on,” somewhere in the Westchester County community around the area, adapting children’s classics and classic productions for the stage. Over the recent Passover and Easter vacations, the group presented “The Adventures of Peter Cottontail,” for example. Westco performs regular commercial productions, pulling in audiences of about 35,000 persons per year to their shows. More about WESTCO is available on their website at www.westcoprods.com.
SUSAN KATZ OF WESTCO IN A FAMILIAR ROLE: Ms. Katz has extensive professional knowledge and technical commercial expertise in both the commercial and amateur theatre circles, acquired through her relationships with arts and performing groups locally, and nationally, as they have evolved over the last quarter century. She is a former actress, director and producer in the musical theatre. She was the National Tour Manager for Godspell before beginning Westco in 1979.
Photo, Courtesy of Peter Katz
Katz said she would program the WPPAC using two professional talent agencies based in New York and local groups, in line with guidance from the “Friends of the White Plains Centre for the Performing Arts.”
The Mayor’s proposal for the management of the theatre, as presented by the consultant, Duncan Webb in January was to have the financing handled by a group of community leaders and the programming direction of the theatre supervised by a voluntary board of citizens from the community, corporations and arts personalities from White Plains and Westchester County. That committee, WPCNR was told, has not been selected as of one week ago.
Westco Awaits Their Cue.
From a financing standpoint, Ms. Katz is expecting capital for the booking of acts and hiring of theatre staff to be raised by the “Friends of the White Plains Centre for the Performing Arts,” this consortium of community and corporate elite is expected to be formed by Mayor Joseph Delfino. If necessary, Ms. Katz said she is in position to fundraise on her own. Currently, she said, 70% of Westco endowment comes from direct sales, 30% is fundraising. In 2002, the organization’s 990 form, required to be filed by the IRS reported revenues of $312,088.
The Mayor’s Office reports members of this committee have yet to be selected, and fundraising to capitalize the theatre has not begun.
Ms. Katz said that programming could begin to be explored and booked when official, realistic “opening” dates for the theatre are set, community needs spelled out, technical specifications detailed, and programming mix and funding budgets outlined by the city committee.
Centerpoint Stage Created to Run the Centre
The third actor upon the White Plains Performing Arts Centre mythical stage is Jonathan Mann, Executive Director of Centerpoint Stage. Mr. Mann is presently Director of Community Arts for the Westchester Arts Council. Mann has been with the Council since 1993 and has been “building and maintaining partnerships with school districts, day care centers, shelters, seniors and local governments, as well as corporate and individual donors,” according to his biography.
In his tenure he says he has increased community arts programs and funding by 300% since 1998 and has coordinated events for the Arts Council, among them over 1,000 arts education programs in schools and human service agencies.
THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF: Jonathan Mann shown on Martine Avenue introducing the two stories of the White Plains Performing Arts Centre. He told WPCNR he hopes for a Regional Theatre. Mann said he plans to make White Plains Performing Arts Centre a showcase featuring national productions of dance, music and theatre seamlessly programmed with ample opportunity for local arts groups to use the unique venue, from White Plains and other communities “throughout the county and region.”
Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
Mr. Mann dreams of the WPPAC presenting unique original performances “with the thought that when you get up on stage (in White Plains) and perform, you .should be presenting with a relevance to the community.”
Mann is intimately familiar with presenting original works of relevance. In 1997, he ran a “staged reading series for new plays and serves as development and arts education for Circle in the Square Theatre School. In that position, he has increased fundraising revenue by 1500% in six years.
Mann has theatre in his blood, literally. He grandmother, Ida Moulton was from Butte, Montana who traveled to New York at age 19 to become an actress. She built a following working with legends Sam Harris and George M. Cohan., even performing in the RKO Keith Albee Theater in White Plains during her vaudeville career. His grandfather, Martin Goldman owned New York jazz clubs: Birdland, Basin Street West and The Embers in the ‘40s and ‘50s. His father is Theodore Mann, Tony award-winning Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, and recognized as a leader in the development of Off-Broadway Theater.
Major Names in Theatre Wait in Wings to Provide Programming Resources, Financing.
Mr. Mann told WPCNR that Centerpoint Stage will, if selected by White Plains to manage White Plains Performing Arts Centre, draw upon well-connected movers, shakers, producers, agents and achievers in the theatre today. He will have at his disposal the programming resources and opportunities available to Circle in the Square and the national theatre organization, Jujamcyn Theatres, managers of New York’s Eugene O’Neill, Martin Beck, St. James, Virginia and Walter Kerr Theatres, 5 of New York’s 39 Broadway theatres. He feels White Plains will be a major attraction to music, dance, and theatrical productions that play these venues and others like them.
Mann said he will draw on the expertise and opportunities available to Paul Libin, Producing Director and Vice President for Jujamcyn Theatres, to program Centerpoint Stage. For national music, recording, and dance groups, he said he will call on the resources of the key recording company executive, Neil J. Foster, Executive Vice President of Operations for RCA Music Group, BMG North America, to explore the possibilities of bringing major music and recording performers to the WPPAC.
Local Expertise at Running a Regional Arts Center.
In addition to Mr. Lubin and Mr. Foster as heavyweight programming resources, Mr. Mann will be relying on Deborah Sommers of Purchase, N.Y., currently Director of Programming for Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University for the important piece of creating a financial identity, base and business operations of WPPAC.
Sommers, according to her profile, created the strategic plan for the Quick Center in the 1990s, raising 90% of funds through sponsorships, fund-raising and grant-writing. Mann notes Ms. Sommers got the Quick Center up and running and based on her personal credentials she brings expertise to WPPAC in both “programming, earned revenue development, and contract negotiations.” Ms. Sommers reports she increased revenue at the Quick Center 80% in five years, and audiences 300% and as Director of Marketing was responsible for the Quick Center’s promotion,
Angels of Westchester Poised to Contribute. “On Stand-By”
Centerpoint Stage is an organization ready to go, according to Mann. He said he has a roster of angels living in Westchester who are eager to contribute initial capital to the theatre, and to aid in fundraising and corporate sponsorship efforts.
He said he has a core group of about 30 prominent arts personalities around the region whom he will work with together with the city committee overseeing the White Plains Performing Arts Centre to present programming.
The Envelope, Please
The highly visible and political job of running the theatre is now scheduled to be given away to one of these three organizations or the possible fourth in late May, Gretsas indicated last night. WPCNR was told by Gretsas that May 19 was the day of decision just last week. When WPCNR interviewed Professional Facilities Management Mr. Mungeon said he was told a decision was to be made May 5. Mr. Boykin said Thursday the council would be having presentations of the three on that date.
Webb might recommend perhaps a combination of Professional Facilities Management and Westco, giving the city the local presence of Katz and the national reach of Professional Facilities Management.
On the other hand Mr. Mann’s Centerpoint Stage, seems to appear in theory to have a “complete package” of resources to draw upon, but the resources are not under contract. They are on “stand by,” pending the awarding of the job of managing the new theatre.
Curtain going up on the next act, May 19.