JMU to Build New Performing Arts Complex
By SEAN YOUNGBERG
HARRISONBURG, Va. -- It’s been nearly twenty years since it last happened--twenty elongated years since James Madison University (JMU) constructed new builidngs for its performing arts complex or updated any of the old ones.
Instead, the university's music building was built in 1989. Theatre II was constructed from a turkey hatchery in 1974, and the Latimer-Shafer Theatre was built even earlier in 1967. In the decades since, the facilities have become outdated in both their technology and capacity to host audiences and performers. Meanwhile, JMU performing arts students have thrived if not excelled, performing on Broadway and in Hollywood, writing musicals and plays such as Legally Blonde.
But now students and their professors are about to get their turn. A new Performance Complex that President Linwood Rose calls “truly first class” is estimated to cost approximately $68 million dollar and projected to be ready to open in 2010.
Out-of-date technology, worn down facilities, small classrooms and long lines to get into practice rooms will soon become a thing of the past.
“I often have to wait in line for 30 to 45 minutes for a practice room, and sometimes I don't get one at all,” said Kelsey Ray, sophomore vocal performance major. The new complex is expected to ease those problems through the addition of 33 practice rooms.
“It’s not only the practice rooms that intrigue the music program, but the fact that for the first time in the history of the JMU music program they will have a performance facility they can call their own, ” said Jeffrey Showell, a professor and the director of the School of Music. “We have never had real performance facilities.”
Along with the new practice rooms, the facility also will provide Showell and the music department with six new offices, a large ensemble room, a high-tech classroom and storage facilities.
“Not only will the new facility bring our universities department up to par with other universities, it will unify the performing arts departments,” said Heather McElwain, sophomore musical theatre major.
As coordinator of musical theatre, Kate Arrechi, assistant professor of musical theatre, constantly finds herself conversing and working with other professors from the music department. “I think that all of us being closer together geographically speaking will make this collaboration much easier,” she said.
And the new facilities will provide the theatre department with rehearsal halls, lighting and costume studios, a black box theatre, dancing studios, dressing rooms, along with a new proscenium theatre to replace Latimer-Shafer.
In recent years, JMU's performing arts program has grown in both size and reputation.
“The theatre and dance department has an excellent reputation in the region, and that reputation is growing,” said Kevin Sherrill, assistant professor of theatre.
During the 2007-08 school year, nearly one thousand students are pursuing degrees in music, theatre, musical theatre, and dance. There are over four hundred student pursuing degrees in music, and over three hundred in theatre.
According to Arrechi,“There are many other students who are neither majors nor minors who are very involved with the School of Theatre and Dance and its programs.”
“Any kind of program that is growing both in terms of numbers and quality has needs that also evolve accordingly, ” said Bill Buck, a professor and the director of the School of Theatre and Dance. “More students mean more classes, and therefore the need for more facilities.”