The Greensboro Arts Alliance and Residency will be before the Greensboro Development Review Board this evening, seeking a permit to build a "state-of-the-art performance arts facility" on 10 acres of what is now farmland and the site of the Hazendale Farmstand.
The building, if approved, will include performance and office space. It will be named the Mirror Theatre, paying homage to Shakespeare's Hamlet. The name comes from a passage in Act III, when Hamlet is giving acting advice to a trio of players:
"...let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up to nature."
While GAAR will occupy and operate the building, construction and operating costs are not coming out of the nonprofit's coffers. The facility will be funded by one previously anonymous donor. However, in light of community skepticism about GARR's ability to support the project, that donor has chosen to identify himself.
"...let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up to nature." -Hamlet, III, ii
Last week GAAR released an open letter to the community from the project's financial sponsor, Andrew C. Brown. Brown's letter ensured that, if approved, he will fully fund the Mirror Theatre project. Brown explained he is a second home owner who first came to Greensboro as an orphaned child.
"By way of background, my family and I are part-time residents of North Shore Road," Brown wrote. "I first arrived in Greensboro at the age of 12 in 1968, when I became an orphan and was taken into care by the Carpenter family on Randolph Road. Friendships in Greensboro have kept me and, latterly, my wife and children, coming back ever since. Although we have lived and worked and built a business overseas for the past 30 years, we have made Greensboro our American home."
Brown went on to say he prefers to remain anonymous in his philanthropic ventures, but he is "breaking cover in the case of the Mirror Theatre in order to dispel misapprehensions about the project..."
He continued, "I would like to reassure all concerned that I intend for the Mirror Theatre to be a net asset to GAAR and thence the community. I undertake to sponsor the land acquisition, design and construction and to donate the resulting [theater] to GAAR on a debt-free basis, together with funding to cover any gap between the revenues and operating expenses of the new facility."
Brown went on to say the nonprofit GAAR will continue to fund itself through donations and ticket sales.
He concluded, "I hope this will be my only public pronouncement and that the Mirror Theatre soon will be permitted to speak for itself as a contributor to employment and enjoyment in and around Greensboro."
A recent GARR e-newsletter described the Greensboro project:
It is comprised of two small barns (36’ x 90’) attached via a lobby to an intimate Elizabethan theater structure (a 68’ diameter cylinder). The barns house the bare minimum support facilities needed to run a successful theater, including the infrastructure to accommodate a café.
If approved, the new building will include performance and rehearsal spaces, administrative offices and costume/scene shops. The facility is designed by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, a New York City firm that has worked for arts organizations such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center.
