While settling in her temporary office, energetic theater professor Gerilyn Tandberg giggled as she watched her colleague, Pat Acampora, frantically skate around the second floor of Hatcher Hall.
“He’s the key giver,” Tandberg said with a smile and a wink, then turned her attention to Acampora as he anxiously tried to explain which keys will let her into their new home.
Their old home, the Music and Dramatic Arts building, is finally getting its delayed renovations after 25 years of lobbying for $22 million to revive the dying 1930s structure. Over winter break, everyone in the building packed up and moved across campus to Hatcher Hall, ending the two-and-a-half-decade wait.
Ronald Ross, M&DA dean, said instead of tearing down the building, he favored the growing practice of restoring its art deco architecture — a style consisting of bold colors and geometric designs. The Manship School of Mass Communication recently received $4.1 million worth of renovations to its 1934 Journalism Building.
“The Shaver Theatre is a gem,” Ross said of the intimate, 425-seat drama house in the M&DA building. “It is one of the best examples of a 1930s art deco theater — it just needs to be restored.”
Tandberg, a theater costume designer in M&DA for more than 30 years, said that before she received word of the move she was starting to get worried the renovations would never come.
“I thought I was going to have to live to be 200 [years old],” Tandberg said.
Ross said the planning process has been a complicated journey that has required tremendous patience.
He also said the state-funded project had to wait to become the No. 1 priority for the Board of Supervisors and the Board of Regents, and then had to get state legislative approval.
“We’re the No. 1 in the nation,” Tandberg said. “For the worst facilities.”
Tandberg said the joke applied only to the building because the theater department has a remarkable faculty, and with decent facilities, could be one of the “hottest programs in the country.”
Tandberg said she hoped the new facilities will help the University recruit more set designers and technicians.
Theater Department Chair Michael Tick said when he came to the University in 1999, he brought three different building consultants who said the facilities were the worst they had seen.
But Tick said he does not think the poor facilities have hindered recruitment, based on the dramatic increase in enrollment. In the last five years, the theater department has grown from 35 undergraduates to 165.
Tick said it has been a challenge — he noted he had attended more than 30 meetings regarding the renovations in the last three years — but he said he came to the University specifically because of the pending renovations.
“I wanted to go to a university where I could redo the main building,” Tick said.
The University also renovated the basement and part of the first floor of Hatcher Hall solely for the use of former inhabitants of the M&DA building. The Communication Disorders Department, which formerly resided on the first floor of the M&DA building, will move to Hatcher Hall permanently.
Hatcher Hall basement renovations also allowed for the construction of a permanent, 4,500 square foot black-box theater with a scene and set shop across the hall. The petite, non-traditional theater is set with the stage in the center of the floor with seating on three sides.
Tick said he is impressed with the temporary space the University provided in Hatcher Hall.
Although he said space would not suffice indefinitely, Tick said it is remarkable for the two to three years it will take to renovate the M&DA building.