San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
THE CURTAIN RISES AT SOUTHWESTERN
New performing arts center at college will have multitude of uses
On the evening of March 16, 2020, Southwestern College’s theater students performed their last dress rehearsal of their upcoming production on the stage of the 52year-old Mayan Hall Theatre.
The troupe didn’t know at the time that their bilingual performance of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” would never see opening night. Three days later, the governor announced a statewide shutdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“(Our director) said that we’ll do one last dress rehearsal with the costumes and everything,” said Jaden Guerrero, a third-year theater and music student. “It was our last.”
On Monday, Guerrero and two other students from that production returned to the Chula Vista campus to act out one of the scenes, this time at a shiny new auditorium that’s part of the longawaited Performing Arts Center.
College officials unveiled the 48,000-square-foot facility, adjacent to the Wellness and Aquatics Complex at Otay Lakes Road and East H Street, just in time before fall classes begin Monday. The center will start the semester with 51 performing arts courses, making up 70 percent of the total classes that will be taught in person.
The building will house student activities, as well as community and other public events. It is comprised of lecture halls, classrooms fit for dance, theater, stage prop and construction, as well as the 540-seat auditorium and a 151-seat black box theater that can support a variety of events or classroom instruction, according to designers Tucker Sadler Architects.
It cost $66 million to erect the Performing Arts Center, which was funded by Proposition R ($5 million) and Proposition Z ($61 million). Prop. R passed in 2008, with $389 million in general obligation bonds for construction or rehabilitation of the college’s facilities. In November 2016, South Bay voters approved Prop Z., a $400 million general obligation bond for Southwestern College to make infrastructure renovations. Also planned under Prop Z. is an expansion of the Higher Education Center in San Ysidro and a new Student Union, college officials said.
“With the opening of our new Performing Arts Center, the oncevacant corner lot has realized its full potential,” College Superintendent and President Mark Sanchez said in a statement. “The Performing Arts Center — coupled with our Wellness and Aquatic Complex — are great opportunities for our community to engage with Southwestern College.”
The building’s floor-to-ceiling glass facade and it’s massive sun mural that stretches across the exterior is impressive, but it’s the technology and adaptable rooms for learning the history and technical aspects of performing arts for a college with an aging Mayan Hall that have theatre arts professors like Ruff Yeager and Playwright Thelma Virata de Castro excited to begin the semester after months of virtual learning.
“The pandemic, like with everything in our world, has interrupted that rhythm as well as made it nearly impossible to communicate in person … But now that we’re inside, and we’re in this building, we’re going to be in a different rhythm,” said Yeager, adding that enrollment filled up quickly for his acting class. “They’re looking for some outlet. They’re looking for contact.”
For student performers, the carefully designed stages offer them a chance to bring quality work.
“At the other theater (Mayan Hall), it ate up the sound, so we really had to just stand there and really just push,” said second-year student Gabriela Flanders.
“You got to give out everything in one breath in the middle of a line,” added third-year student Marcel Ferrin. “It makes it easier when you don’t have to exert so much.”
Faculty said the new space is also inspiring a more refreshing take on teaching.
Yeager said part of his teachings this semester will ask students to reflect on “who you are as a human being so that you can represent a character on stage. I’m going to focus a lot more on that. After this pandemic, I think that’s even more important.”
The center already has a show planned for October: Virata de Castro’s “Hand Under Hand,” a musical that explores Asian American caregivers. Auditions are expected to begin in the coming weeks.
Mayan Hall is expected to be torn down in the coming months, with no definitive plans for what would become of the area, said Cynthia Mcgregor, dean of the college’s Arts, Communication and Social Sciences.
With much excitement about new performances and the return to in-person instruction, students and faculty acknowledged that COVID-19 is still present and that precautions must continue. Southwestern College announced earlier this month that it will require masks and vaccines against COVID-19 before the start of the semester.
“I’m just glad they’re (the college) giving us a chance to prove that we can keep things safe,” Guerrero said.