Performing arts school keeps pace with downtown cultural scene by Clarence Hein less than two years old, PSU's School of Performing Arts is promising to be a perfect complement to the city's cultural scene. Just a short walk up Broadway from the Paramount, where work has begun on the new performing arts center, PSU is busy developing new performance spaces and degree programs. The most ambitious project is a proposed 170-seat theater to be located in a now vacant boiler room in the Uncoln Hall basement. Called The Boiler Room Theater, the facility ~~r~~~!~:c~~t~~ ~7~~br:rtment performance facility _ Currently, the department is limited to one major production each term in lincoln Hall Auditorium, a facility it must share with other University departments as well as community and visiting artists. The Boiler Room Theater, with an entrance and box office under a covered walkway on Broadway, will cost an estimated $317.000. A fund raising effort to pay for construction was launched by the University in January. Plans call for seating to be arranged in several levels around a stage area which could accommodate a variety of performance slyles,.induding theater in the round. Preliminary designs and a scale model already have been completed. A second new performance space. this one already in use, was developed this year by the Department of Dance, which renovated the old cafeteria space in Shattuck Hall to create a dance studio. The studio, with a specially designed floor, seats approximately 200 persons for dance performances. Development of the facility was supported by the University and by the Autzen Foundation. The Shattuck Hall Studio will make a permanent home for PSU's resident dance company, The Company We Keep, also accommodating performances by outside dance companies. II is the only specifically designed dance performance space in the area. In addition to the new performance spaces, the School of Performing Arts has new degree programs in the works. The University's Faculty Senate has recommended to the president the establishment of a Bachelor of Mus)c (8M) degree, effective next fall, and a special planning committee has urged development of a bachelor's degree in dance. Both would be " profesSional" degrees, which emphasiz.e development of professional performers. The 8M degree proposal will be submitted to the state board office for review this spring. The School of Performing Arts produces a quarterly calendar of events at PSU and also has information about the school's new programs and facilities. Fundraising for the proposed Boiler Room Theater in the sub-basement of Lincoln Hall (top) got underway in January with a social event staged in Rian's Atrium Breadbasket. where theater department head William Tale (left photo, al right) explained tbe project ~ reti~ PGE executive Hilbert Johnson, his wiie and Priscilla Blum examined the model. PSU dancer Sara Grindle warms up in the Shahuck Studio Theater (above), which has already hosted two perfonnances by PSU's resident dance group The ComJNny We K~, and one by a visiting troupe. 7
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