Brown Trinity Consortium banking on new space

09:24 AM EDT on Monday, September 26, 2005

BY CHANNING GRAY
Journal Arts Writer

The tellers' counters are gone. The dropped ceiling is history. The old Citizens Bank building on Empire Street has been transformed into a flexible theater space for the Brown Trinity Consortium.

Journal photo / Sandor Bodo

Instructor Kelly Wicke-Davis leads a dance class for students in the roomy, open space of the Pell Chafee Center, the former home of two banks.

About 200 students and faculty will use the new Pell Chafee Performance Center, which will be dedicated today.

Original plans called for the building to serve as a third stage for Trinity Rep, with 400 fixed seats. But costs for such a center ballooned to around $12 million, said Edgar Dobie, executive director of the theater.

So Trinity settled on a flexible, scaled-back $5.1-million version that will be used for Trinity's children's acting classes and by students from the consortium, the training program for graduate-level actors, writers and directors. Directing students from the consortium will be able to present their plays there.

A few events will be open to the public, and eventually Trinity expects to rent the space to other groups.

The other day, workers were busy hanging lights 25 feet above the floor in preparation for today's dedication. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 5:30 p.m. and a buffet will follow.

Claiborne Pell, the former U.S. senator and longtime arts supporter, is expected to attend, along with his wife, Nuala, and members of the Chafee family. The building honors Senator Pell and the late Sen. John H. Chafee, who as governor of Rhode Island in the late 1960s made it possible for Trinity to become the first American company to appear at Scotland's famed Edinburgh Festival.

The space is essentially a huge box, with a magnificent vaulted ceiling arching 45 feet above the floor and laced with circular skylights. A special spongy floor has been installed for dancers.

The 3,600 square feet of performing space can accommodate 250 stacking chairs, or 450 patrons for parties and the like.

A warren of rooms in the basement are being used as for classrooms.

Besides its graduate program, which it runs in conjunction with Brown, Trinity holds after-school acting classes for children from kindergarten through 12th grade.

The first chance the public will get to attend an event at the center is the weekend of Oct. 7-9. The theater will present Big Love, Charles Mee's adaption of Aeschylus' The Suppliant Maidens.

The show, fully designed and mounted, is being directed by consortium student Birgitta Victorson, and acted by student actors. Admission is pay-as-you-can, and show times are Friday at 4 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets, $5, will be sold at the door, first-come first-served. For more information, call (401) 521-1100, ext. 106, or go to www.trinityrep.com.

In April, AS220 plans to present the latest installment of the Terrastock Festival, a sort of Woodstock for the peace-and-love crowd.

Dobie, the theater's executive director, said a lot of groups are interested in using the space.

Organizers aren't sure, though, what they'll use the bank's old vault for. But a former safe deposit box area is being eyed as a concessions stand.

Pell Chafee, built in 1929, served as a bank until a few years ago. It was first owned by Old Stone, then Citizens, which gave the building to Trinity in June of 2000, after the branch closed.