This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In high school, the drama department saved me from aimlessly shuffling through the years left to an undistinguished graduation.
There were dreams of being the lead of the play, the star, just as any other kid might have wanted to be the killer quarterback or the top student in the class.
As it happened, I started backstage and never made the boards. I learned make-up from books, served as a stagehand, prop arranger and a go-to gal for anything the teacher or director wanted. My senior year, I was billed as student director of "The Miracle Worker."
Which should make me enthusiastic about the proposed Broadway-style, 2,500-seat theater on Main Street, within walking distance of the City Creek Center rising just down the street. Imagine, big shows with big effects and big music, and casts filled with stellar actors.
But there are a couple of things bothering me about it — first and foremost, its current $100 million dollar cost (sure to be lowball), and the cost to taxpayers already straining in this messy economy.
The second is, why do we need a huge, fancy theater when there are any number of smaller, more intimate ones throughout the state? Theaters where you can watch the actors' faces, their slightest motions, and feel the humor or heat or pain of the plot?
This stems from my freshman year at the University of Utah, when I saw "King Lear" in the tiny, downstairs Babcock Theater. That ignited my lifelong love for Shakespeare's works; many years later, I'd take my daughter to see the same play in the much bigger Pioneer Theatre, and her absorption mirrored my own.
We've seen ballets and musicals at the Capitol Theater, including "Miss Saigon," and none of us felt denied of seeing a real helicopter hovering over the panicked Vietnamese as the city fell. In theater, an audience's imagination is as important, maybe more so, as any fancy stagecraft.
Ballet West also makes its home at the Capitol, where an audience member can clearly see the grace and precision of the dancers and feel the music in our bones.
The Salt Lake Valley has no dearth of theaters; add in Kingsbury Hall, Abravanel Hall, the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, the Salt Lake Acting Company's comfortable venue in the Marmalade district, the Off-Broadway downtown, Hale Centre Theatre, the Desert Star, and many other, smaller houses.
They put local actors, musicians, stagehands and techies to work. They understand what their theatergoers want. And they cost a lot less than the $100-million-and-up envisioned for the proposed theater.
I'm wary, too, of the big plans to raise a glass-enclosed playhouse, adjacent to a new, 25-story office building that could rise from the rubble of our beloved old Tribune Building, shabby and obsolete as it's become.
Mayor Ralph Becker's grand notion of a catalyst for downtown growth is not to be laughed at. But given the money problem — Salt Lake County's not all that interested in contributing — you've got to wonder if it's worth the risk to taxpayers.
If the big, fancy theater doesn't materialize, we won't be bereft. We'll still see the tears, hear the sighs, and see the dancers sweat, ever so gracefully.
Peg McEntee is a news columnist. Reach her at pegmcentee@sltrib.com and facebook/pegmcentee.