Art imitates life, the saying goes. In rare cases, it also imitates politics.
Salt Lake Acting Company’s 2011 musical satire, “Saturday’s Voyeur,” turned inward — and onto the stage of the most contentious topic to hit Utah theater in years: Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker’s proposed $100 million, 2,500-seat, “Broadway-style” theater.
The shot comes when Becker, wearing a bicycle helmet and played “smugly calm and slim” by Alexis Baigue, crunches numbers with the play’s calculator-wielding “Bimbo.”
“Do you really think it’s feasible for people to give 10 percent of their income to your pet project?” she asks.
“Hey, the [LDS] Church has been getting away with it for more than 150 years,” the mayor answers.
Those lines draw snorts galore. Behind the curtain, however, Utah’s theater community isn’t laughing. Nor are some taxpaying skeptics who wonder why Becker seems bent on tossing that kind of money at such a large, even lavish, project.
“It feels as though this is an attempt by well-meaning leaders to keep up with neighboring cities such as Phoenix or Denver,” says Royce Van Tassell, vice president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, who notes the price could swell by an additional $10 million in interest between the theater’s planned 2013 construction and 2015, when the city’s funding mechanisms would become available.
The proposal brings to the fore myriad questions, including whether other venues would survive the introduction of a Utah Performing Arts Center (UPAC) on Main Street, whether audiences here would embrace a wider array of traveling Broadway productions and whether such shows would drive up interest in the arts as a whole.
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Published Feb 22, 2012 07:52:02PM
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Those at the helm of established arts organizations worry that city officials have overplayed the power of the arts as an economic tool, especially during a time when funds for all arts organizations come at a premium.
“This may be inevitable and is something that should be considered,” says Melia Tourangeau, CEO of Utah Symphony | Utah Opera. “But regardless of what’s said about it being a self-sustaining venue, I’m highly skeptical of that being the case.”
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“What is the need?” » It’s not the first time Becker has drawn controversy over a proposal to redraw downtown’s map. After public outcry, the mayor opted to place a planned $125 million Public Safety Building just east of his first choice, Library Square.
By contrast, he seems resolved to see a Broadway-style playhouse at or near 135 S. Main. If all goes as planned, the building would bear the imprint of Moshe Safdie, the same architect who designed downtown’s showcase library. Part of his motivation, Becker says, is driven by the desire to link a long-dormant part of Main with the LDS Church’s $2 billion City Creek Center to the north and Gallivan Center and office towers to the south.
“We do not have a catalyst for blocks in between,” Becker says. “This will pull parts of the city together and add to our proud tradition of supporting the arts.”
The effort is also something of a Becker family affair — with the 2008 enlistment of brother Bill Becker, a Tony-award-winning producer, to help guide the project.
“The last thing I want to see — and I’ve told this to my brother — is to go into a project that everyone’s going to call a white elephant five years later,” Bill Becker says. “That’s the last kind of legacy I want.”
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