‘Quite a Triumph’
Photographs by Gabe Souza
Jim Thurston can’t predict precisely how the soon-to-open Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts will transform art-making at Colby.
But he knows it will.
Instead of working in isolation in their respective departments, faculty from many departments will work together under one very large roof, bringing new opportunities for “water-cooler conversations” about each other’s creative projects that will enable deeper, richer collaborations for students, faculty, and audiences.
“In terms of opportunity and promise, both are enormous,” said Thurston, associate professor of performance, theater, and dance. “From my point of view, it will be absolutely fantastic to have students, staff, and faculty from multiple disciplines in the building at once. All those chance encounters in the hallways will lead to projects and new ideas.”
Steven Nuss, associate professor of music, is eager to explore how sharing his working space with peers from other departments will inform his teaching, scholarship, and creativity. With his current office in Bixler, he interacts predominantly with music students and faculty. That will change at Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts, where he will have access to a range of ideas, peers, and technologies.
“The proximity I will have to all of my colleagues is something that is very exciting,” he said.
Serving as a convening space for students and creative ideas, the 74,000-square-foot creative center will open in fall 2023 as the largest academic construction project in College history. Anchoring the south side of Mayflower Hill Drive, the glass-encased building will complement the Harold Alfond Athletics and Recreation Center, which opened in fall 2020—a large-scale multipurpose structure that promises to transform the campus, community, and how students and faculty experience their time at Colby.
With a cost estimate of more than $90 million, the building is named in honor of lead donor and Life Trustee Michael Gordon ’66, whose gift made the project possible. Other supporters of the Gordon Center include Trustee Marieke Rothschild P’16 and her husband, Jeff Rothschild P’16. Colby also has received several major anonymous gifts to pay for an open forum at the center of the building, the costume shop, and dressing rooms.
“This will be the first time we have acoustically perfect spaces for what we are doing, adjusted specifically for each ensemble. The sky’s the limit for what we will be able to do.”
In addition to the Department of Performance, Theater, and Dance, the Gordon Center will serve as the academic home and creative hub of the Music and Cinema Studies departments and the multidisciplinary Lyons Arts Lab, an incubator funded by Colby Trustee John Lyons ’85, P’22 and Colby Museum of Art Board of Governors member Susannah Gray P’22.
Distinguishing features of the building include three multipurpose studios, each about 2,000 square feet. The studios are designed for adaptability and versatility. The so-called “sandbox” studio is a maker space to encourage creativity and experimentation. The “dark” studio will resemble a small black-box theater, and the “bright” studio will include a spring floor and mirrored wall for dance.
Glass-walled, soundproofed studios, classrooms, and seminar spaces are scattered throughout the three-story building. The idea behind the glass is to create transparency so people walking through can see what’s going on inside the studios. Those people walking through may do a double-take when they peer into the music studios. On purpose, the walls are not perfectly plumb to improve sound absorption.
Designed as idea incubators, some spaces will include drafting tables and equipment, 3D printers, and computer stations to enhance and elevate creativity and lead to new ideas. This spring, the Music Department ordered a half-dozen new Steinway pianos.
It will serve as the new home of the departments of Performance, Theater, and Dance; Music; and Cinema Studies and the multidisciplinary Lyons Arts Lab, an incubator funded by Trustee John Lyons ’85, P’22 and Colby Museum of Art Board of Governors member Susannah Gray P’22. Annie Kloppenberg, associate professor of performance, theater, and dance, is the inaugural director of the lab.
Thanks to an anonymous donor, the building also will include dedicated film editing, screening, and recording rooms and will incorporate multimedia and interactive technologies. The dedicated video-editing space is a much-needed resource, and the demand for those services will increase as more students embrace video as a means to express their creativity, said Steve Wurtzler, chair of Colby’s Department of Cinema Studies.
The heart of the Gordon Center will be a 300-seat recital hall and performance space that will serve as a regional magnet and allow Colby to elevate the quality of music, theater, and dance programming for students and the broader community, including the possibility of a summer classical music festival. Colby opted for a capacity of 300 seats because a theater of that size is large enough to accommodate touring performers but not too large to feel uncomfortable with a small audience.
Yuri “Lily” Funahashi, associate professor of music, said the Gordon Center will help Colby recruit more students who are interested in studying music and performance, and the performance hall itself will transform the art-making process because ensembles large and small will have a dedicated space designed for versatility, acoustic excellence, and audience enjoyment.
“We have not had any specific performance spaces for our ensembles for the entirety of the history of Colby. This will be the first time we have acoustically perfect spaces for what we are doing, adjusted specifically for each ensemble,” she said. “The sky’s the limit for what we will be able to do.”
With its finely tuned acoustical elements, including panels of white ash, the theater will become a destination for the arts in central Maine, Thurston said. “There are no spaces in the region that will have the acoustical possibilities that the Gordon Center theater will have. We will be able to use that space and fully appreciate a range of performance and production that does not exist right now. It will be a gem for central Maine,” he said.
Nuss said the College will be able to present a range of performances in a space “that rises to an artistic and creative level” appropriate to the art being created.
“That’s quite a triumph,” he said.