Crimson and Gold Connection; Joe Firman

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro and I want to thank you for joining me this week for the Crimson and Gold Connection. This week, the director of the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts joins me to talk about the upcoming 2017-2018 performance schedule. Joe Furman, thank you for joining me this week on the Crimson and Gold Connection. Thank you for my pleasure to be here. You know, for KRPS listeners who may have heard about the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts, but who have never attended a performance there or anything else, for a first timer, how would you describe the facility? I would say for the first timer, the old McDonald's commercial comes to my mind where we say, we do it all for you. The building was built for all of the community.

It was built and designed with a great sense of the customer and the user, including the artist. It's an artist built facility in the sense that they help with the design and it's such a comfortable, wonderful environment for them that they give you a better performance. And for the audience, it is just spectacular. What kind of events are coming to the Bicknell in the next few months because the center not only hosts major productions, but also PSU concerts and lectures? We are hosting an incredible variety of events and one of the things I was speaking to some of our folks about the other day was the idea that we have so many great things going on, we sometimes lose sight of all of them. And we tend to focus sometimes on some of the bigger national shows. But what I would like to really highlight is that the artwork being done by our students and our departments is more incredible than ever. They finally have a facility that lives up to their talents and skills. So on October 19th through the 22nd, the pit state theater program will be presenting their opening show of the year.

And we have a great number of conferences and events that you don't often see advertised, but our premier groups that I would say is always what the music department is up to. And so the performance hall is going to be hosting the Southeast Kansas Symphony with their opening night concert on October 21st. And we have a couple of really fun partnerships we're doing this year. On November 11th, we're going to be holding a fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House of the four states. And we are doing a Nashville songwriters night. We're bringing in award-winning composers from Nashville who are going to be performing their own work. And of course, the Dean family, who is a great supporter of the arts here in Pittsburgh. Their son Barry is an award-winning author. These happen to be all of his friends. And so he'll be here to perform. And we are just really looking forward to that. On the 14th of November, we also have the Women in Government Lecture Series. And we're going to be having Michelle Obama's Chief of Staff. So those are the kind of experiences that you may not think of in a center for the arts.

The idea of a student-driven art being just as world-class is what we're bringing in from the outside. Now, of course, we have our Broadway series opening on October 29th, and I'm super excited that we were able to bring the 20th anniversary tour of Rent to campus. To be able to say that this facility is a capable house, is an understatement. We can pretty much take absolutely anything that's on the road and do as beautiful a job as any place. And to quote one of the directors who came in last year, it really is better than Broadway. Most of the Broadway theaters are stuck within a city block. They don't have the expanse that we have. They don't have stages as large as ours. But we have a house that is designed for great music and great theater. And to be able to have the room backstage for all support is just incredible. The big deal, of course, is an incredible place to see a performance. But on the website, there are also volunteering opportunities. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. We have been working very hard to create the outreach to the community.

And our volunteers have, in many ways, come from a group of community members. We have the trouble cleft club here in Pittsburgh, and a lot of their members asked if they could help out. And so they have made up the core of our volunteers for the last couple of years. But we are looking to expand, and we are always glad to have volunteer ushers. And we have an entire training program that we put people through in a scheduling process. So it's not just about coming in and saying, well, I want to work this one event. But we actually have volunteers who get to be involved over the course of weeks or months or years, who get to really develop that sense of ownership over the building. And so as we move forward, even with the gallery space, we're looking to add people to come in and be able to show people around and welcome guests and give tours of the building. So it's a very slow process to build out a volunteer core. But Alex Weiderman, who is my right arm and John Eastman, who is my left arm in the building. Between the three of us, we've created a volunteer core that is starting to really be involved

more and more and more. Originally, we had him for the larger Broadway shows. Now we're trying to have them for more and more of the PSU events as well. Yeah, if you go to the Bicknell Center's website at booknellcenter.com slash programs right now, you'll see that they already have booked events through the beginning of May of 2018. You went to a conference a couple of weeks ago in Ohio, and I was wondering if you had any inside information that maybe wasn't posted to the website about the 2018-2019 schedule events coming to the center. When we came home from the conference, we asked people online before we went. What would you like to see us bring back? Now, of course, they recommended things like Hamilton and Funny Enough that actually is the company that takes Hamilton on the road is a company we work with for our Broadway shows. They asked them what's it going to take to bring in Hamilton, and they said they're still doing two week or three week runs, and the guaranteed is over a million dollars still. I thought that might just be a little pricey for our budget, so I've got it on my list for the future, but we are looking with them to see what Broadway shows are out touring

are going to be able to fit into the schedule. I went to hundreds of different booths and met with hundreds of artists and agents, and then your brain starts to lock on to what's going to work well for our market, what's going to look good in Pittsburgh, and there's a couple of shows that have kind of come to the top. I have a folder of about eight inches high of things that we brought home, and I have a folder that's about four events thick of things I think would be great to do. The problem is with contracting and scheduling, you never know what's going to quite fit, but what really stuck with me is we haven't had any Irish dance or music yet, so I would love to bring in Irish dance music group, and I looked at a couple of different performance options there, so I don't want to put the can out of the bag yet, but that is what's on the top of my list. There's also a couple of Irish banjo groups out there that I looked at and said, boy, that would be fun to have. And of course, we're always looking for a variety of things to bring things to Pittsburgh that have never been here before, and we sometimes accidentally fall into events.

Last year we had Menazel Brass, they called us as they were going by, and that's like a $30,000, $40,000 kind of concert that we were able to pick up on the way by for much, much less. So we're always keeping our eyes open for the opportunities that just present themselves. This week I was speaking with the director of the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts. Joe Furman, I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 3.50. We'll see you next Friday at 7.50.