Centering on Fuquay-Varina Cultural Arts
Citizens in Fuquay-Varina know that we have a new Cultural Arts Center that opened just after you got your Spring copy of Suburban Living, Fuquay-Varina. The description and revealing before & after pictures are at www.fvarts.org. But here, we tell the rest of the story. How was it designed? Who is the Director? What opportunities does the Center create for you? When will we go? Where will we park? Why should we care?
The Center Comes Alive
My picture of the new center began before the movable furniture arrived. It is spacious, light, white, bright, and above all, carefully planned for people doing art—dancers, painters, graphic artists, actors, directors, singers, musicians, crafters, and teachers of any art. It was enriched by the “soft opening” on March 11 for Fuquay-Varina people especially involved in the Center. Mayor Byrne gave introductory tributes to major donor Bob Barker, Town Manager Adam Mitchell, and Arts Center Director Maureen Daly. Seeing the entire facility in full use made it come alive as our town’s place to watch, listen, and discuss. Lively performances by the new Fuquay-Varina Chorale and magician Joshua Lozoff gave us glimpses of our cultural future.
A Model of Design
Fuquay-Varina has been talking about a Cultural Arts Center for 25 years. Half a decade ago, results of an online community survey framed the problem when it inspired Parks and Recreation to put a cultural center at the top of their list.
They envisioned a theatre in the old Belk building. But specifications soon revealed a prohibitive cost of emptying the 80-year-old building with supporting columns, to create a large theatre space. Preparations were made to have the theatre reside in its own addition, twice as big as the original plan, while the old building still with supporting columns, could now provide rooms galore for all the other arts.
The final implementation includes dressing rooms with lighted mirrors, like the movies. Fine artists now have a painting studio full of south-facing windows, pure white lighting, high ceilings, and even a large enough wash basin to clean up. Musicians have a room with an ultra-high-end electronic Yamaha piano and space enough for a good-sized choir.
It’s easy to see that at every stage of design, planners queried committed community members to discover new perspectives on the project.
The Center Director
Wait until you see the theatre! Our planners did our town proud by making it the premier community theatre setting in southwest Wake County. A critical factor was the appointment three years of ago of Center Director, Maureen Daly. She is superbly trained, with a BFA in theatre from Wayne State and an MFA in Acting and Directing from Virginia Commonwealth. She has deep experience as Theatre Director in Winston Salem and Cultural Arts Administrator in Rocky Mount. But that’s just the paper part of her story.
Developing your Theater Perspective
Talk with Maureen and you will learn a perspective on theatre that most people never acquire. Children rarely know and we adults too often forget the difference between live performances and screens, big or little. When we laugh, cry, or applaud in our living rooms or movie theatres, it makes no difference to the performance. When we show our feelings in a live audience with live actors, they become contagious, deepening performances and reflexively enriching our own experience.
If we really want to show our feelings and lose the mundane here and now, we should not meet the actors before the show. Theatre is magic and illusion. If you meet an actor before the performance, it would be like knowing how a magician does a trick—no illusion, no magic, no surprise. And it is not just us and the performers. Our fellow audience members matter too. As Director Daly put it, “A known story creates a shared community experience unlike what we get at the movies.” We can go again and again to the same play and it is never the same. Audiences, actors and our neighbors all speak differently every time.
Perhaps you would rather be in a giant auditorium instead of participate as audience members. There are high schools that have drama teachers and opportunities to be in big productions with thousand-seat auditoriums. Imagine the size of sets you can create or what you can do with a backdrop that plummets from the top of a four-story stage. Those are the advantages of big. But then ask yourself about building those sets, or more important for some stories, having to walk across a huge stage before giving a tender hug? Our Cultural Center stage is more intimate than those giant stages. Small can be beautiful, too. Our theatre is middle-sized and our townsfolk will find it not only beautiful, but comfortable too.
We will have acting classes and opportunities at the Center too. Supervised involvement in theatre for children does not end with performance but includes many volunteer tasks that help manage a production. Do what Director Daly does, “Pick a show and grow.”
Dance Studio
The dance studio epitomizes the thorough planning for our new arts center. You know you are in a dance studio as soon as you see on the walls, at two different heights for different sized bodies, sturdy wooden railings (or as dancers call them “barres”). But don’t forget to look at the floor, which is not just like a typical gymnasium, but rather, a special flexible flooring designed to preserve dancers’ joints.
Visual and Digital Arts
The design of the new Fuquay-Varina Cultural Arts Center continues to surprise and delight with its 21st century vision. We can not only act or create sets and costumes or become ushers, we can even do what all these activities miss: learn how to curate, choose, and tell a story. In our Center’s seven-person digital lab, anyone with a smart phone can turn an aimless walk around town into art. The lab’s expert will help us decide what we want people to laugh at, cry at, or have a broader, deeper, more impactful conversation about. Any of us can explore different ways to get a point across.
Even the walls flexibly display our community’s culture. They will be home to the “Silver Arts” competition during the first half of April with water colors, creative writing, and heritage crafts like quilting and hand woodworking.
Performances
The Center will host many diverse concerts and performances. It is home to the Fuquay-Varina Chorale under the direction of Maggie Cook, which had its Spring Concert on May 17 and 18. At the soft opening, many were surprised at seeing over 40 members already singing with poise and precision.
Renowned magician and speaker, Joshua Lozoff, modeled how to connect and experience with people around you. I’ll never forgot how he made me hide a card in my hand and with apparent deep concentration pulled out from his flipchart sketch of a full deck – his own drawing of it—the Ace of Hearts.
From now on, we will surely include theatre plans for our special nights out. More people will attend films, too. We are on the 2018-19 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers—in addition to only Charlotte and Winston-Salem in North Carolina. Each film screening includes an opportunity with a film creator for the audience to discuss issues of the documentary or explore the art of filmmaking.
Classes
There will be a rich variety of classes, programs, and workshops. People with limited budgets and those with generous spirits need to know about the “Friends of the Fuquay-Varina Art Center.” This group provides scholarships open to children or adults for classes or anything else that helps citizens enjoy or participate in the arts. Membership begins at $25 per year and the organization helps to make arts available to everybody. One special offering was the Center’s work with the Joel Fund, which provides non-traditional classes in sculpture, writing, and painting for veterans and their families (especially those with PTSD).
Parking
So where are we going to park? People in the know keep getting this question, but the answer is right under our feet. There are over 300 parking spaces within 3.5 blocks of the new center. Twice as many people come for concerts to Centennial Park at Main and Academy Streets as will fit in the theater. Walking is healthy and downtown Fuquay needs foot traffic. The new Cultural Arts Center will change what we think and do while out and about our town.
This is your Center
Director Maureen Daly closed our interview with her watchword “This is your center.” She explained, “We’re here to support and challenge the artistic endeavors of all Fuquay-Varina residents. It’s only as good as it is active. We need art. It defines who we are. It tells our stories.” Let’s help to define Fuquay-Varina and tell our stories with our neighbors.
