Download a PDF - Stage Directions Magazine

In the Greenroom
theatre buzz
Theatres Seeing Fundraising Successes
Despite the tough economy,
there are some theatres
still moving ahead
with fundraising campaigns
and meeting success.
On January 14,
Southern Utah University
President Michael T.
Benson announced a $3
million grant to the Utah
Shakesearean Festival from
the George S. and Dolores
Doré Eccles Foundation,
earmarked as the “lead gift”
for the campaign to construct
a new Shakespearean Theatre. The new theatre, along
with the current Randall L. Jones Theatre, will anchor the
Utah Shakespearean Festival Centre for the Performing Arts.
To be built one block east of the current outdoor theatre, it
will replace the aging Adams Theatre with a state-of-the-art
facility designed to enhance
the Festival experience for
thousands of patrons in the
years ahead. Patrons of the
new theatre will enjoy the
same unique experience
that audiences found in the
Adams Theatre, an intimate
presentation of Shakespeare
under the stars.
The Eccles Foundation
grant—designed to “jumpstart”
the campaign for
the new Shakespearean
From left to right: Gerald R. Sherret, former mayor of Cedar City, R. Scott Phillips, Utah Shakespearean
Festival executive director, Fred C. Adams, Festival founder, Jyl Shuler, Festival development director,
Michael T. Benson, president of Southern Utah University
Theatre—includes an outright
gift of $1 million and
Rendering of Utah Shakes' New Shakespearean Theatre
an additional $2 million “last dollar challenge” grant to be
contributed when the remaining campaign goals for the
theatre have been reached. More than $16 million has been
secured already toward the $33.7 million needed for the
new facility.
In Berkeley, Calif., the California Shakespeare Theater
received a 2-year, $160,000 grant from the Dean & Margaret
Lesher Foundation, which was awarded to support of the
Theater’s on-going operations, plus a capital investment
of $100,000 toward Phase I of their plans to reinvigorate
the Bruns Amphitheatre as a permanent, sustainable and
welcoming home for the Theater’s artists and audiences.
“We are so grateful to the Dean and Margaret Lesher
Foundation for their generous support of Cal Shakes,”
commented Managing Director Susie Falk. “2010 is a
landmark year for Cal Shakes, with our first commissioned
world premiere scheduled to open on our main stage, the
10th anniversary of Jonathan Moscone’s artistic leadership,
and the scheduled completion
this summer of the first
phase of our construction
project, The Campaign for
the Future. With this award,
the Lesher Foundation reaffirms
its leadership in supporting
significant cultural
institutions in the East Bay.”
In Cleveland, Ohio, Tom
Hanks supported classic
theatre as well, donating an
unspecified, but presumably
large, gift to the Great
Lakes Theater Festival. His
donation allowed the GLTF to reach the amount necessary
to trigger a $1 million matching grant from the Kresge
Foundation. The Foundation had extended its deadline
so that GLTF could raise the necessary funds. Hanks has
long had a connection to GLTF, having interned there
for several seasons when it
was still known as the Great
Lakes Shakespeare Festival.
The grant will go towards
paying off GLTF’s loan it
incurred when rebuilding
its new Hanna Theatre
home as well as start an
endowment for the company.
Finally, in Milwaukee,
the Skylight Opera Theatre
received gifts from nine
generous donors to create
a challenge fund of
$250,000. The challenge
fund will match dollar-for-dollar new money from firsttime
or increased gifts to its 50th anniversary campaign.
To date the Skylight has raised $120,000 toward matching
the $250,000.
“We are so excited that these generous donors have the
confidence in the Skylight to create this challenge fund,”
said Amy S. Jensen, the Skylight’s managing director. “The
combination of the challenge fund and the matching new
or increased gifts is already enabling us to make great
strides in stabilizing our financial situation. Our goal is to
get the Skylight back on solid financial footing so we can
honor this generous support by continuing to offer the
high quality music theatre productions and free arts education
programming the community has come to expect.”
In addition to this challenge fund, the Skylight received
a generous gift of $60,000 from the Richard and Ethel
Herzfeld Foundation to support general operations and
the Skylight’s arts-in-education program Enlighten.
6 March 2010 • www.stage-directions.com