Gonzaga University has a brand new arts venue on its campus.
The Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center will feature its first performance later this month.
The 52,000-square foot location features a 759-seat performance theater and concert hall. That hall will feature both student performances as well as 12-to-15 national acts in theater, dance, and music per year.
In addition there is a recital hall/dance studio that can hold an audience of 168. That room features a sprung floor for dance performances, variable acoustics, and audience set up for different events.
Kathleen Jeffs, who chairs the theater and dance program at Gonzaga, says the new facility will not replace other performance spaces at the school, but actually create an “arts district” on the campus itself.
“Where we are now is not only adjacent to the theater and dance studio where we not only teach, but the music center, that’s now a rehearsal venue, with an open space for performances. And we're connected right next door. You can see it from the window, the Magnuson Theater, with its 210-seat theater, which will continue in full operation,” Jeffs said.
The addition of the state of the art new facility will also make Gonzaga more attractive to touring companies, according to marketing manager Peter Rossing.
“Performers and performance art companies like to go where they have facilities where they don’t have to compromise their performance, and then we have staff here who can support them too,” Rossing said.
Jeffs says some of the performances that will be brought in can also be linked to curriculum that is being taught in the theater, music, and dance classrooms.
“And what’s neat about that is it connects the wider community and people who aren’t sitting in Gonzaga classes to things that are being taught in the classroom. So it’s a way to come in and see things that may be familiar to you to things you’ve never heard of, but either way you’re experiencing that kind of learning of engaging something new, at least new in this moment or fresh to Spokane,” she said.
The new facility was enabled through the gift of $55 million from long-time Spokane resident Myrtle Woldson, who passed away four years ago at the age of 104. Thirty million went to construction of the facility, and $25 million for student scholarships, the first of which were given out this semester in the form of $15,000 awarded to 14 students.
A surprise highlight of the new Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center is the collection that bears her name on the second floor. It’s a replica of three rooms of her South hill home, the entryway, her dining room, and music room, complete with dozens of items of her personal property, as well as an adjoining interpretive center that describes all the objects.
Performing Arts Director Laura Sims says the idea was to let the public get to know Myrtle Woldson.
“It’s not just a name on a building, we can show who Myrtle Woldson was. Plus she was a Spokane native who lived here all her life, and the fact that this woman with this sharp business sense was able to take this money that her father left her and grow it into this gift that she gave the university is amazing,” Sims said.
The opening performance at the center is called A New Season: A Celebration of Artistry, Place, and Potential. It will feature 29 dancers, nine actors, 41 poets, 63 singers and 31 orchestral players who will take the audience on a journey through the seasons. It begins April 25.
