September 2005

The Carolina Theatre continues to survive and thrive
By CHARLES ALLEN MASON

DURHAM - The Carolina Theatre in the Bull City is a busy, ornate building that represents Durham's theatrical legacy.
It stands while the Jack Tar Hotel, formerly the Washington Duke Hotel, is a distant memory in the downtown - collapsed by the wrecking ball of progress in 1975.
The last of the original 13 theatres in downtown Durham, its competitors shuttered in 1977, and the old, city-owned Durham auditorium opened in 1926. It would take the name the Carolina Theatre when it was leased from the city by a commercial movie theatre chain.
In its infancy, it played host to public functions and live entertainment such as Will Rogers' Ziegfeld's Sally on February 6, 1926.
The designers influenced by the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb, it bears an Egyptian motif: golden wheat shafts with crossed blue ribbons that flank the Fletcher Hall stage, according to information on the Carolina Theatre Web site.
According to architecture, it falls in the neo-classical and Beaux-arts style, using a recurring design element that looks like a dogwood flower, the theatre's Web site notes. It also was the only Durham theatre that admitted African Americans -- who used separate entrances, ticket booths, seating and lounges. The African Americans sat in the upper balcony and entered by walking up steps on the outside of the structure.
In 1927, African American opera singer Marian Anderson performed for an audience comprised of all races.
In 1963, the theatre became integrated under a court order, following the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
In 1998, the Carolina Theatre of Durham Inc. signed a 10-year management agreement with the city of Durham to operate and manage the theatre complex after a $7.8 million renovation and restoration project was approved in 1986 and initiated in 1992.
In its former lives, the theatre hosted up to five movie showings a day in the 1940s for soldiers from Camp Butner and others, and later served as an art film theatre, featuring a Charlie Chaplin film festival in 1978.
It's still a busy place, according to the woman who runs it
"We're open every day except for Christmas Eve,'' said Connie Campanaro, president and chief executive officer of The Carolina Theatre of Durham, Inc., the non-profit board that runs the facility at 309 West Morgan St.
"We're the 7 Eleven of the entertainment business,'' she said.
Campanaro said the theatre's stage hosts more than 100 events a year. She described the theatre as "elegant, rich and acoustically superior.''
When the new seats were constructed for Fletcher Hall, the side panels used were from its 1926 vintage, Campanaro said. The seats themselves look historic, although they are just 11 years old and installed during the 1994 renovation.
Those blue-colored seats get a lot of work as the theatre hosts everything from live musical performances and plays to gay and lesbian film festivals.
Campanaro said it takes a lot of work to keep the old theatre up and running. Since coming to the Carolina Theatre five years ago, Campanaro said she's streamlined operations, put her staff in place and distributed the workload.
As she announced the new season recently, Campanaro reminded her audience that other events and performers could make their way to Durham in addition to the ones appearing in the brochure.
Last season, guitarist Buddy Guy was brought in as a season calendar addition and just eight days later he was being inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, she said.
"It doesn't make sense for us to pass up a great opportunity just because it's not listed in the brochure,'' Campanaro said.
With more than 1,000 seats in resplendent Fletcher Hall, the theatre's main performance area, the audience is treated to the best in acoustics.
"The building is so constructed that a person talking in a moderate tone can be easily heard on the last row of the second balcony,'' the Durham Morning Herald reported January 17, 1926 of the just-finished $250,000 edifice.
"The Carolina Theatre is an example of how a theatre can be the focal point in the life of the community,'' said Montrose "Monte" Moses in 2001, who with his wife, Connie, kept the theatre from the wrecking ball fate of the old Washington Duke Hotel.
Carolina Cinema Corporation of Durham was created by Moses to stave off the possible demolition of the Carolina Theatre.
The group rented the theatre from the city for a buck a year.
In 2001, theatre welcomed its 1 millionth visitor since reopening in 1994. One year later, the non-profit board operating the facility gave the Durham County Commissioners a $200,000 check - signifying full payback of the county loan.
Soon, the Carolina Theatre may not be the only theatre in downtown Durham.
There's a proposal to construct a more than $30 million downtown theatre on the former DATA site bounded by Mangum Street, Blackwell Street and Vivian Street to secure a new home for the American Dance Festival.
The 2,800-seat theatre is expected to anchor further development downtown - including housing units, office and retail space, according to a memorandum given the Theater Subcommittee of the Durham City Council in June of this year.
The plan calls for the new theatre's operator setting higher rental rates than what the Carolina Theatre now charges and also booking shows at the Carolina Theatre that would be too small for the new venue.
According to the memo to the council committee, the Carolina Theatre has estimated its business would have lost $147,000 in 2004 if the new theatre had been operating then.
The Carolina Theatre currently has a $40,000 surplus in its bank account, eliminating a more than half a million-dollar deficit in just over a decade, according to officials.
Both Edward Rose, chairman of the Carolina Theatre's board, and Campanaro believe the new theatre project in Durham can be a plus for both the existing theatre and the one on the drawing boards.
"This is an opportunity for us to work closely with the city,"' Rose said. "We're hopeful having another theatre down the street will lead to more people coming downtown.''
Campanaro said the officials are continuing to work out the finer points of the project.
"There's an interest that the Carolina Theatre stays healthy,'' she said.