Along about 50 years ago, the people of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, Washington saw a need for a community performing arts center.
"They envisioned a place where local singers, dancers, musicians and actors could perform on a top-quality stage. A place that performing arts teachers could use to inspire their students and where our young people could find the self-confidence to perform in front of family and friends."
But you'll notice that none of the promoters of a Greensboro downtown performing arts center have even mentioned local performing artists-- not one. And you can bet they won't be doing so. The acts they plan to book are the same acts that would normally book venues like the Greensboro Coliseum and the War Memorial Auditorium.
A privately owned downtown performing arts center will be too expensive for local performing artists to book shows. And a performing arts center under the auspices of Matt Brown and the Greensboro Coliseum Complex will be forced to operate at a net loss as the coliseum has done since its inception, circa 1958.
That's over 50 years of getting ripped-off and they want to continue doing business as usual.
Oh, they'll tell you how they want to build it just like the Durham Performing Arts Center and how it has been so great for the City of Durham but what they won't bother to mention is that Durham's struggling local performing artists, like Greensboro's struggling local performing artists, still have to make their way across the country to those world class cities Greensboro "leaders" are always talking about before they can take the stage at home.
You see, it's never been about Greensboro's performing artists.
When I was performing, I dreamed of the day I would return to Greensboro to perform at the Carolina Theater, the place where I saw my first movie 50 plus years ago, the place where I saw my first stage act years later. It never happened for me and Greensboro's "movers and shakers" don't care if it happens for the rest of Greensboro's performing artists. You see, to them it's not about the arts, it's about selling real estate and to forget that one fact will cost all of Greensboro more than it can ever afford to pay.
If Greensboro is going to have a performing arts center then it should be built in East Greensboro and it should be accessible as a venue for Greensboro's performing artists. Anything else is just plain wrong.
Continue to article #25 Will Martinsville Beat Greensboro To The Punch?
