Page 19 - Priorities #46 2010-March/April

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excellent acoustics, practice rooms, a full
inventory of new instruments, and ample
file space for a growing music library. A
MIDI Lab—that stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface— allows students to listen to, compose, and arrange music, as well as offering some exciting tools for teachers. “In this room,” says Tina Paulson, “I have the ability to record my choir and play it back for them so they can have instant feedback on how they sound. I create rehearsal tracks for my students and post them on Moodle so they can sing along with the computer at home.”
Unlike the old facilities, all the new spaces can be used simultaneously without a noise problem. Instrumental Music teacher Eileen Dimminger explains, “Because the buildings are sound proof, we can have a choir practicing in one room, students using the MIDI lab, students practicing in the practice rooms and me running an orchestra, all at the same time.”
The new facilities inject an exciting sense of professionalism into the performing arts at Priory. John Sugden says, “Now when I’m working scenes with kids, it’s really easy to give them the experience of theater lights, give them the experience of pulling props and pulling costumes specific to their characters. We can go over to the large space and get the sense of how your voice needs to pitch in order to carry in a 400-seat theater versus a more intimate space like the Black Box.”
The set shop has contributed greatly. “When we did Midsummer Night’s Dream,” says Sugden, “it was a set with three levels. There was a forty-foot high tree that Oberon and Puck could appear at the top of, a working cave, a sloped hill. It gave the actors so many options, and the tech kids so many challenges to put together. Because we have these facilities now, we can really give kids a collegiate-to-professional experience.”
Getting to practice and perform in such beautiful, up-to-date spaces, Tina Paulson says, “gives students a sense of pride and a sense
of professionalism. It makes them bump it up that much more. The expectation is, we’ve done this for you, so give us your
best.
The journey to the current performing arts center was a long one,
Give us your very best on a daily basis.”
beginning over ten years ago. Father Martin remembers, “A number of us were saying, we really need to do something better than what we’ve got now. At the end of every play we’d say, “You know, guess what we need, but anyway...” We’d make all sorts of little subtle suggestions about what might be nice in the future. It was something a lot of us were on board with, but we didn’t know we could afford it.”
Head of School Tim Molak was an early proponent—“He was the sparkplug,” says Father Martin—as was Ray Rothrock, who joined the Board of Trustees in 1999. At that time, Rothrock says, “There was a seed of an idea to build a new auditorium. I remember walking the campus with Tim Molak and hearing his vision for the school. It was very inspiring.” Next came brainstorming meetings with then- Chair Wayne Davison, Brother Edward, Tim Molak, and the performing arts faculty. Brother Edward remembers those meetings well. “We sat around the table and dreamed. When we came out of those meetings, they thought we were crazy. Well, sometimes that’s what visioning takes. It means taking risks.”
Tom Carter provided input as to what an ideal performing arts center would look like. “I had a little computer drafting program that I used to create a ground plan,” he says, “and that became a template of sorts for future discussions.” Before long, a $15 million capital campaign was launched—incorporating other building and improvement projects, but with the PAC as its centerpiece—and an architect was found, MKThink of San Francisco. The years that followed involved fundraising, town meetings, design revisions, higher projected costs, and more fundraising. The whole Priory community got involved, including major contributors of time and treasure Ray and Meredith Rothrock,