Sunday, May 19, 2001
A&E Section
New Loop Theater would make it easy to make an evening of it
By Judith Newmark
As Julie George-Carlson puts together plans for the proposed Loop Theater, one phrase keeps running through her head:
"Dinner and a show. Dinner and a show."
There's a reason for that expression. A lot of people consider theater, a supremely social activity, the centerpiece of an evening that starts with a meal. Of course, some people prefer things the other way around; they like a late supper. Some theater-goers want to meet for drinks before the curtain; some don't consider an evening of theater complete unless it winds up with coffee, dessert and impassioned conversation about the play.
There is no such thing as a theater district that doesn't include restaurants. We tend to assume that the theaters come first, but why should that be so?
George-Carlson believes that the Loop district, already home to 30 restaurants, is a perfect locale for live theater. It needs nothing but a theater to turn it into one.
Joe Edwards - the owner of The Pageant and, with his wife, Linda, of Blueberry Hill - thinks so, too. That's why he's buying Olivet Missionary Baptist Church - he expects to close the sale within the month - to convert into the Loop Theater, a performance space. The building, at 6166 Delmar Boulevard, is across the street from The Pageant, a little bit east of Skinker Boulevard. The congregation is moving to a new building.
If things go according to schedule, the Loop will open in less than a year as a venue for mid-sized theater and dance troupes. It will have two stages, both brand-new: one in what is now the church, the other a flexible black-box in an annex to be built on an adjacent parking lot. The main theater will seat about 200 people, the annex about 150. The project will cost under $5 million.
Of course, the Loop is not the only St. Louis neighborhood with plenty of restaurants; the South Grand business district is another. There, Mekong Development Company is making plans to convert an old Woolworth's store that it owns into a theater. Bay Tran - the development coordinator for Mekong, a firm headed by her father, Tai Tran - sees the empty, three-story building between Hartford and Arsenal reborn as the South Grand Performing Arts Center.
The main-floor theater will seat 225 to 250 people; upstairs, there should be plenty of room for rehearsal, shop and office space. Tran expects the renovation to cost up to $3 million. "We are looking to create a first-class space. Best case, we'll be ready in the fall of 2002; worst case, spring of 2003," Tran said. She hopes several troupes will make the theater home, with the space available to rent to other performers as well. "We want to keep the theater open every night."
There's also a third prospect on the horizon. Earlier this month, Vincent Schoemehl, the former St. Louis mayor who is president and CEO of Grand Center, met with members of the St. Louis Mid-Sized Arts Cooperative to look at ways to increase smaller production and gallery space in that area. Some mid-size companies already use Grand Center venues, such as the Grandel Theatre and The Sheldon.
No specific new locations or dates are on the Grand Center table, although talk continues about the long-neglected Medina Temple on Olive Street. "At this point, we are talking about needs assessment," said Lisa Suggs, the cooperative's administrator. "But a lot of people are pursuing fresh possibilities."
The fact that some of those people are in business, rather than the arts, encourages Carol North tremendously.
North, the artistic director of Metro Theater Company, has been involved in the performing arts in St. Louis for nearly 25 years; in that time, she observes, artists have mostly tried to handle their space needs themselves. They were never particularly good at it.
"But now, there's this zeitgeist in St. Louis," North said, "a hopeful wind of change.
"When a business entity, when somebody like Joe Edwards or Tai Tran, steps forward to play a lead role, that is very gratifying because it shows they know what a vital arts life can do for a neighborhood. That kind of partnership is imperative."
The Loop seems likely to open first. Edwards and George-Carlson began talking about a Loop theater more than a year ago. Under the arrangement they have set up, Edwards would own the building. George-Carlson, who is managing director at Ozark Actors Theater in Rolla, heads Theater 101, the non-profit organization that would run and book the facility. (She is quick to point out that this is not a sinecure; once a board is in place, she could be out of a job.)
The idea, George-Carlson said, is always to have something playing, so that people need not say, "Let's see such-and-such performance," but "Let's see what's at the Loop." She plans coordinated advertising campaigns and calendars with that in mind.
Qualifying non-profit troupes "will have to be able to pay the rent, and the rent will be reasonable, " she said. "The schedule will likely fill up fast. I want to make a space with something for everybody. The doors will be open."
Her first goal is to raise money from foundations, corporations and individual donors to finance the theater's renovation and operation, then to fill the Loop Theater with local productions - not shows booked in from out-of-town - by small companies with more creativity than money.
Right now, the ArtLoft in the old Washington Avenue garment district is the prime space for work like that. It's a good choice, too - a versatile venue that people are getting to know. But no single venue can meet everybody's needs. Schoemehl is particularly concerned that the higher-profile troupes don't crowd out still-smaller players. "We need spaces that are as flexible as possible," he said. "The issue is not just performance space. It's support space, it's educational space, it's parking, it's restaurants. This is a complex puzzle."
He doesn't need to tell that to Scott Sears. "We have been in the space-hunting business for a good five years," said Sears, artistic director of the peripatetic Off the Cuff, a theater troupe. "But it takes pretty deep pockets to make these things work."
Artists haven't had pockets like that since the days of the Medici (and even then, those pockets weren't their own.) "Artists don't have a lot of collateral," said the executive director of Gash/Voigt Dance Theatre, Scott Giffen, whose troupe is exploring the South Grand space. "A corporate backer is a huge plus. Instead of having to buy property, we can have a long-term lease. That's do-able.
"And it would be a great home for us. The South Grand area is extremely international, extremely vibrant. We'd fit in there."
Would the new theaters cancel each other out? Nobody's worried about that - not in a city where the perennial complaint is the dearth of relatively small, relatively inexpensive venues. Ideally, new venues in the Loop, on South Grand and in Grand Center would all join the ArtLoft in filling the gap that was left when the St. Marcus Theatre closed about a year and a half ago.
Mid-sized performing arts organizations felt the loss of the St. Marcus keenly. It was never a great space - there were two big pillars at the front of the stage, you had to walk down a steep flight of stairs to go inside (forget accessibility), and there much to do in its largely residential South Side neighborhood. But theater-goers had grown comfortable there, and the rent was so cheap that companies could afford to stage shows that might not pack in audiences.
Scott Miller, artistic director of New Line Theater, knows all about the paper-thin economics of production on that scale. His company, long anchored at the St. Marcus, wandered a little before settling in at the ArtLoft. He loves that space, with its high ceilings (perfect for hanging lights), flexible stage and generous lobby, but he's excited about new, low-cost venues in town, whether New Line uses them or not.
"This is a miracle, long overdue," Miller said. "I think Joe Edwards is a saint."
Another St. Marcus veteran, playwright and producer Joan Lipkin, agrees with Miller - "we need several more theater spaces, not just one" - and, on the subject of food, with George-Carlson.
"When one of my plays was done in London, food was right there," she said. "I thought that was perfect. As far as I am concerned, eating and theater go together."
The Loop East, as Edwards calls the area around The Pageant, is in walking distance of the U. City Loop. (The Pageant and the Loop Theater are in the City of St. Louis.) At one time, though, no one drew municipal distinctions in that neighborhood. The Loop - the business and entertainment district where the Delmar trolley tracks ended and looped back toward downtown - was just The Loop, period.
The Loop retains its other historic boundaries, with solid residential neighborhoods to the north, to the south and to the west, where U. City's towering lion sculptures overlook its hubbub. No one is going to put new businesses in any of them; these are residential, not commercial, districts, with no reason to change their identity.
East is the only direction that the Loop renaissance can go, and Edwards believes the movement east of Skinker is already underway.
New galleries, clothing stores and design studios have moved in recently; some longtime businesses, among them a Thai restaurant and a tuxedo-rental shop, continue to hold their own. "The diversity of this area is a plus," Edwards said, "and I don't just mean racial diversity. Age diversity, economic diversity - everything comes together in the Loop. That's a plus for any arts group. Midsize live theater is a good fit for this area, where everything is in walking distance of everything else." He's right: The Loop is six blocks of buzz. All that's missing is the hum of set construction.
Copyright 2001 Post-Dispatch