Nestled in the basement between thick square support pillars, the young musicians eagerly consume sheet after sheet of music, building a crescendo with violins, timpani and horns. Three floors up, a group of usually-playful thespians reenact a somber scene of social injustice that weighs heavily on the hearts of both performer and observer. Just down the hall, a man is singing with a controlled, operatic vibrato, his voice accompanied by a lively and flowing piano number.
These are typical scenes in the everbustling building, the sort you’d probably see at an opera house or theater in Chicago or New York. But this isn’t some mysterious retreat for the elite, inaccessible to the casual arts observer. It isn’t the imposing stone structure of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the ultra-modern expressionist Sydney Opera House or the ornate and sprawling Louvre Museum in Paris. Still, the art and performances displayed here are, in their own way, as intriguing, compelling and profound.
This is a treasure in the heart of Springfield, a place where the blue-collar worker and the starving artist can rub elbows with the city’s movers and shakers. It is the Hoogland Center for the Arts.
“There’s almost always something going on here,” Janet Seitz Carlson says with a smile that reveals her fondness for the center where she is marketing and communications director.
Even on an off night, it’s not uncommon to see streams of people flowing in and out of the six-year-old center, coming for one of the many exhibits, shows, meetings or rehearsals. On a recent weekend, the Hoogland held two separate plays and two different art openings – all featuring the inspiring talents of local artists.
That level of near-constant activity is encouraging, some of the Hoogland’s resident arts groups say, but it can also be a problem. Fourteen arts groups share the center, along with outside performers, and some of them have already begun to feel claustrophobic.
And the heavy traffic doesn’t necessarily translate into more money, so the Hoogland must regularly ask the community for donations. They have an automated giving system that deducts monthly gifts from a donor’s bank account. Then there’s the StarWalk program, which commemorates large gifts with an 11-pound brass tile, bearing the donor’s name and a star like one would see at Grauman’s Chinese theater in Hollywood. And for the right price, donors can affix their name to practically anything at the Hoogland: a theater, a dressing room, even an elevator or a chair. But Carlson says all of this is a dis-
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