Wortham Theater Center
Encyclopedia
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...
center located in downtown Houston
Downtown Houston
Downtown Houston is the largest business district of Houston, Texas, United States. Downtown Houston, the city's central business district, contains the headquarters of many prominent companies. There is an extensive network of pedestrian tunnels and skywalks connecting the buildings of the district...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The Wortham was designed by Eugene Aubrey of Morris Architects and built entirely with $66 million in private funds. The City of Houston owns the theater, and the city's Convention & Entertainment Facilities Department operates the facility.http://www.houstontx.gov/cef/index.html
It officially opened on May 9, 1987 with one of the inaugural performances being a modern dance program, Tango Argentino, in the Brown Theater and Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
and David Byrne
David Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...
's The Knee Plays, presented by the Society for the Performing Arts in the Cullen Theater.
Significant private funding
A significant portion of the funding, needed to build the center, came from the estate of the late Gus WorthamGus Wortham
Gus Sessions Wortham , was a businessman and civic leader.-Biography:He was born on February 18, 1891 in Mexia, Texas to John Lee Wortham and Fannie Sessions. He moved with his father, John Lee Wortham, to Houston, Texas, and opened John L. Wortham and Son, an insurance agency...
(1891–1976), a local philanthropist and founder of American General Insurance Company. The Wortham Foundation contributed $20 million for the construction of the new Theater Center, which was named for him. In spite of the late 1980s banking and oil recession
Recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...
, more than 3,500 donors committed funds for the new facility in a major community effort with nearly 2,200 individuals donating $100 or less to the capital campaign. Additionally, the Cullen Foundation contributed $7.5 million, and the Brown Foundation gave $6 million to the building fund.
Performance facilities
- The Brown Theater, with 2,405 seats, is named for donors Alice and George Brown. It is used primarily for opera and large ballet productions.
- The Cullen Theater, with 1,100 seats, is named for donors Lillie and Roy CullenHugh Roy CullenHugh Roy Cullen was an American industrialist and philanthropist. Cullen was heavily involved in the petroleum industry, was a large supporter of the University of Houston, and longtime chairman of the board of regents for the university...
. It is used for smaller ballet productions and other events.
Some additional facts about the Center
The Houston Ballet began its first season on September 2, 1987 with Janie Parker and Li CunxinLi Cunxin
Li Cunxin is a Chinese-Australian former ballet dancer and current stockbroker.-Early life:Li was born into poverty in the Li Commune near the city of Qingdao in the Shandong province of People's Republic of China...
starring in the world premiere of Ben Stevenson
Ben Stevenson
Ben Stevenson, OBE , is a former ballet dancer with Britain's Royal Ballet and English National Ballet, co-director of National Ballet in Washington, D.C...
's new production of Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
. This was followed by Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
's first season, on October 15, 1987 with Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
and Mirella Freni
Mirella Freni
Mirella Freni, birth name Mirella Fregni, is an Italian opera soprano whose repertoire includes Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and Tchaikovsky...
in a new production of Verdi's
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
.
The glass entry archway, 88-feet (27-m) tall, was originally designed
to be the end of a glass atrium
Atrium (architecture)
In modern architecture, an atrium is a large open space, often several stories high and having a glazed roof and/or large windows, often situated within a larger multistory building and often located immediately beyond the main entrance doors...
, but the atrium concept was considered too hot for Houston's summer
Summer
Summer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice...
time weather and a danger in hurricanes, and hence the atrium was omitted during construction. There had been debate about how to re-design the entry section as a non-atrium structure, but the decision was to leave the connecting archway, as designed, and simply enclose with glass. Hence, structurally, the archway could easily be extended, in the future, if some entry structure were to be considered for addition.
The Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
Chandelier, hanging in the Green Room, was originally installed in 1911 at New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Fulton Theater (renamed as Helen Hayes Theatre
Helen Hayes Theatre
Helen Hayes Theatre with 597 seats is the smallest Broadway theatre and is located at 240 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan....
in 1955). During the demolition of that theater, the chandelier was purchased by Houstonians Billy and Janie Price, who donated it to Wortham Center.
The grand staircase, which is actually a bank of escalators, is surrounded by a site-specific illuminated installation by renowned New York sculptor Albert Paley
Albert Paley
Albert Paley is a modernist American metal sculptor, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1944. He earned both a BFA and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Paley initially worked as a goldsmith and moved to Rochester, New York in 1969 to teach at the Rochester Institute...
. To avoid extensive last-minute debates about approving the sculpture by the artwork committee, the illuminated structure was categorized as an issue of lighting/electrical design, not subject to the artwork committee's oversight.
A unique acoustical feature of the theater are its "frying pan" pods, accessible via walkways over the rear of the orchestra seating. This construction enables the music to flow between these pods and into sections of the opera hall that are traditionally not considered good listenting areas .