Scott Richardson’s theatrical labor of love brings eclectic culture to Springfield
THEATER | Scott Faingold
“I would say buying real estate is an emotional decision,” says Scott Richardson. “It’s probably not the wisest move, but sometimes you follow the heart. So we bought a theater!” Not just any theater. The building in question, at 101 E. Lawrence, had served as a focal point for local performing arts for more than half a century as headquarters for the Springfield Theatre Guild, beginning in 1951 until the rechristened Theatre Centre moved to the Hoogland Center for the Arts in 2004. Over the next several years the once-vibrant edifice on Lawrence went through a slow, inexorable process of deterioration.
“When the building closed, you’d drive by and just see it falling farther and farther into disrepair,” remembers Richardson, who first came to the Theatre Guild as a puppeteer in a mid-1980s production of Little Shop of Horrors. “It was just sad. And you’d think of all the good times, and the laughs and the friends, and then you’d think back to the ’50s and all of that.”
Since purchasing the building in April 2011, Richardson, who by day works as a graphic designer for Levi, Ray and Shoup, has remained acutely aware of its particular history, hence the name Legacy Theatre. “In the lobby, as you enter the building, you can’t help but notice all the plaques with names on them. Those are the folks who, in the ’50s, were having bake sales and selling insurance policies to raise the funds to build this facility that they dreamed about, you know? The name honors their legacy, and it was also chosen to honor anyone who performed onstage or painted the scenery or popped the corn or bought a ticket – whatever, anybody who has appreciated what has gone on here, it’s their legacy.”
Not every piece of history left on the building’s walls is quite so stately. “As you can see there’s a million pieces of graffiti everywhere, which is also part of the legacy,” Richardson sighs, pointing around the dressing room area. “We’re photographing every little piece of it but then there’s going to be a nice, spiffy coat of paint, and we’re not gonna write on the walls anymore. We’ve been post ing the pictures on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/atthelegacy) and people go, ‘Oh, I know who that is!’ and it starts a dialogue which is really fun.”
“Fun” would probably not be the best way to describe the painstaking process of resurrecting the long-neglected property, which Richardson purchased personally, in turn leasing it to the Legacy Theatre, which is registered as a nonprofit. “It had really become a little piece of urban decay,” Richardson recounts. “The courtyard had overgrown and there was a homeless population kind of residing here. We cleaned up the courtyard, did landscaping and planting, and happily elevated our little chunk of earth, and hopefully helped the neighborhood a little bit.”
The interior of the building presented plenty of challenges as well, both structural and cosmetic. “This whole project, I keep saying, it’s like eating an elephant, one bite at a time,” says Richardson, smiling through gritted teeth. During the dormant period, the building flooded, leaving two feet of standing water in the basement for months. Carpets were taken up and replaced, and the building’s plumbing, electrical and heating systems all needed revamping. The Legacy, which is staffed entirely by volunteers, immediately sparked the enthusiasm of the local theatrical community. “It’s amazing to see the love that’s been lavished on the project, it just astounds me. It’s so wonderful and so remarkable. People just walked in the door out of the blue and said, ‘We heard what you were doing, this is great, how can we help? I’m wearing my painting clothes.’ So nice,” Richardson beams.
“One of the first things we did was to texturize the walls in the auditorium,” he continues. “It’s a cinderblock building, and I’ve always said, if you’re seeing a show in a cinderblock room, you’re either in a school cafeteria or prison. Not really the vibe we’re going for. So two of my friends spent a solid week, 16 hours a day, up on scaffolding, working on the walls, and then a dozen people wearing kneepads painted the floor under the seats with only little work lights and no air conditioning. In June. It was crazy.”
Of course, all of this labor would have been for naught without a vision of the sort of venue the Legacy would be. Richardson and his associates are betting every chip on their conviction that Springfield is capable of supporting more different types of performance than have traditionally been on offer in the local market. “When we started, there seemed to be some chatter to the effect that we wanted to be competition for the Hoogland,” says Richardson. “Not true. I prefer that we complement. We want our venue to be quirky, and we’re certainly willing to throw some different things out there just to see. If the public doesn’t respond, that’s fine, it’ll be, ‘Welcome to Broadway Musicals 101’ – which is something we also love – but it’s not all we want to do.”
Patrick Russell, a promoter for the Legacy, agrees. “Our target demographic is the seven-year-old crowd all the way up to the grandparents. We do have the sensibility where we get to do things that are a little bit odd, maybe – which is great, but within that, we are doing a lot of different things.”
Indeed, the first year of Legacy shows has lived up to this broad ideal, ranging from the ’50s-’60s classic sensibility of its debut production The Fabulous Wonderettes (mounted while the space was still being renovated), to a flamboyant drag revue benefitting Legacy neighbors the Phoenix Center, to the dark drama Den of Thieves, staged “in the round” in the building’s basement, cleverly utilizing the rough, unfinished feel and indirect lighting of that space to great effect. As expected, each show brought in a distinctly different crowd.
continued on page 14
