Can the city of Gilroy support a community cultural center?
When I first began writing this arts and entertainment column,
this question popped into my mind from time to time. It was like an
annoying fly buzzing around in a car; I couldn’t quite catch it,
and I couldn’t quite get rid of it.
Can the city of Gilroy support a community cultural center?
When I first began writing this arts and entertainment column, this question popped into my mind from time to time. It was like an annoying fly buzzing around in a car; I couldn’t quite catch it, and I couldn’t quite get rid of it. As a result of my experiences reporting, observing, attending and participating in all kinds of performances and exhibits, that pesky fly and low-decibel hum have metamorphosed into a very agitated lion and an unavoidable roar.
Those involved in the planning of Gilroy’s cultural center, including the City Council members and the Cultural Center Task Force, have devoted a considerable amount of energy to where the proposed building should go and what it should look like. However, there are three words in the term “community cultural center,” and I am deeply concerned that not enough attention has been paid to the “cultural” aspect of this project.
Who is going to define “culture”? What is the center’s mission? The center will come to symbolize this city, but who is in charge of ensuring that only activities of high quality will be welcome there? And the big question: Is there enough interest in the arts in this community to support a full-time, 365-day-a-year center? City officials and citizens loudly proclaim that a community cultural center would put a spark into our dismal downtown scene and anticipate that Gilroyans would flock to it. I wonder.
There is no question that Gilroy is home to some wonderful cultural activities. Many of these already have a home while others expect to find one in the new center. But the sad truth is that there are lots of empty seats out there, and many of the seats that are taken do not belong to Gilroyans but to art lovers from elsewhere who know a good thing when they see it.
Last year’s performance of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” at Gavilan College, for example, should have drawn standing-room-only crowds. Odyssey Theatre Company estimates that 75 percent of its ticket sales to its recent production of “The Miracle Worker” came from Morgan Hill, which recently cut the ribbon at its own cultural center. Silicon Valley Open Studios, a program of Silicon Valley Visual Arts that gives artists the opportunity to invite the public into their studios, had only one (one!) participant from Gilroy last year; many more used to participate in the past but became discouraged by the public’s lack of interest.
The reasons contributing to this state of affairs are complex and many. I’ll just cover a few of the obvious ones. Frankly, Gilroyans have gotten into some very bad habits. Many, if not most, people in Gilroy attend a cultural event in town only if they know someone involved in it. People who do not know anyone and are interested in quality performing arts and visual arts experiences assume they cannot be found locally and hop in their cars for greener pasture destinations in San Jose, San Francisco and elsewhere.
Gilroy theater companies know what every other theater company in the country knows: musicals pay the bills. Musicals are a uniquely modern American contribution to the world of theater and deserve a place in any community theater program, but the City of Gilroy’s repertoire has not changed in years. It continues to offer one song-and-dance revue after another, thus ignoring theater’s rich and varied heritage.
In all fairness, probably no one has asked the City of Gilroy to do anything different nor have demands been made on the Gilroy Unified School District to promote its performing and visual arts programs as much as it does its highly successful music programs. I have not seen a performance come out of the high school’s theater department in years, and those of us who use the theater know it is not being loved the way it should be. How can we expect our children to understand and appreciate different means of artistic expression if they are not being instructed in them?
Sadly, the roots of public apathy toward the arts can be found in our culture as well. Twenty-seven million viewers tuned into ABC’s recent documentary on Michael Jackson; people dash home to watch “Joe Millionaire” and “The Bachelorette.”
We are experiencing a frightening dumbing down of culture, and the media is exploiting all of us by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Is the situation hopeless for a real cultural center in Gilroy? There are many who cling to the “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” philosophy. Give them a cultural center, and by golly the people of Gilroy will know what to do with it. My answer to that is a very shaky “maybe.” It would be foolhardy to just wait and see if this fairy tale has a happy ending.
I think this is going to involve some hard work, and not just from the city council and the cultural task force.
Community members: Experience and support what Gilroy’s cultural community already has to offer. If you continue to leave town for art experiences, the foundation of a cultural community center will only be a physical one.
Parents: Expose your children to all kinds of quality performing and visual arts experiences; musicals are just one aspect of a much larger world and alone do not comprise a comprehensive arts education experience. Demand that our city programs and local schools, especially Gilroy High School that has on campus a very decent theater, offer quality programs in the arts.
City council and cultural task force members: When it comes to setting cultural goals for the center, think lofty. Lead rather than be led. Find professional, credentialed consultants to advise and provide quality control. You only need to look at similar centers in Mountain View, Sunnyvale and now Morgan Hill to realize what some of the possibilities are. Also, set an example for all of us by supporting, recognizing and simply showing up at local cultural organizations’ plays and events.
For inspiration, I suggest the words of Arthur Miller. A playwright, he naturally refers to his own craft, but I believe that his words apply to all the arts. He said, “By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience. … Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.”
