AURORA | This crowded wooden building on the north side of the Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora hardly seems like it merits its unofficial title of “Music Mansion.”
As music teacher Bernie Sauer led a group of about 25 female students through concert band rehearsals on a sunny Monday afternoon, it was clear that some degree of sarcasm went into that name. The group of teenagers played flutes, drums, percussion and other school band instruments in a cramped room that measured fewer than 40 feet across. The space had the feel of a temporary trailer for student musicians to practice while their real rehearsal room was under construction.
But that kind of confined space has been the norm for Regis Jesuit performing arts students since the Catholic high school opened its Aurora campus for boys in 1990 and followed with its girls’ division on the site in 2003. School plays, choir concerts, jazz performances, drama classes and concert band rehearsals are all tucked into different corners of the sprawling grounds off Parker Road. But that setup is set to change by the first weeks of 2014.
Later this month, school officials will break ground on a $13.2-million performing arts center and student commons, an addition funded by a massive fundraising campaign. The 44,000-square-foot, two-story building is set to house a 490-seat amphitheater, as well as practice rooms for music and theater students. But the addition will play a larger role for all of Regis Jesuit’s 1,000-plus students. The new building will also be the center of the school’s student journalism program, and it will include a student snack bar and a college counseling center.
“It’s really going to be the heart of the campus, geographically but also in terms of how the building will be used,” said Fr. Philip Steele, Regis Jesuit president, adding that the building will be a common ground between the girls’ and boys’ divisions. “It’s going to make the two buildings seem like they’re not so far apart, like there’s a moat between them. It’s going to make the campus seem a little more intimate.”
Intimate is a good way to describe the current setup of most of the performing arts spaces spread out across the school grounds. For 10 years, Regis Jesuit Theater Arts Director Dolores Boyle has run her program out of a 50-foot-by-50-foot space behind the girls’ cafeteria. The room has served several purposes — it’s where Boyle teaches theater classes, and it’s where students build sets and prop pieces. The room is also the makeshift venue for school productions. Boyle spoke as a group of male students prepared for the school’s upcoming production of “Les Miserables,” lining up dozens of plastic chairs on the floor and on raised platforms for the weekend
performance. Like in past performances, the back of the girls’ cafeteria would serve as the show’s backstage area.
“We’ll have seating for 155. You can tell the seating is very tight,” Boyle said. “This is the space for everything, for painting, for acting, for class. We always have to clear off one thing for another.”
For the past three years, Boyle and her students have performed between the Aurora campus and the theater at Colorado Heights University on South Federal Boulevard in Denver. Bringing shows to the larger theater has helped address some of the issues of space, but traveling productions pose their own unique challenges.
“One of the most difficult things is making sets to fill up the professional-sized stage at Colorado Heights in this tiny little space,” said Keegan Bradac, a senior at the high school. Bradac, the head of production staff and sound manager for “Les Miserables,” noted that the set build for the fall production of “Little Shop of Horrors” would have been a challenge for any professional crew. “We had sets that were 12 feet tall. We were hitting the lights when we’d stand them up to move them. After everything was built, we’d have to disassemble it.”
The new, 44,000-square-foot performing arts building will give students more room to build for those big productions, Boyle said, and it will also offer a more up-to-date learning environment. She pointed to outdated lighting equipment in the rafters and joked that maintenance staff doesn’t even have the right kind of equipment to make the repairs.
“The students will be able to build bigger and larger and better,” Boyle said. “They’ll be able to train on equipment that’s much newer, and get hands-on experience for what they’ll be experiencing in college.”
Bradac won’t be around to see the curtain rise on the new performing arts center stage when it opens in January of 2014. But Bradac, who has yet to decide between DePaul University and Columbia College in Chicago, insisted he wasn’t too bitter about missing out. Working in the confines of this small room has prepared him for a life in professional theater, he insisted.
“I think it’s actually been much more educational and more realistic to build a show in one theater and then move it. Every show eventually travels,” Bradac said. “You have to move it into different theaters across the country. Having the familiarity in high school with doing that is helpful.”
That may be so, but Boyle and the lower class men in the crew of “Les Miserables” didn’t have any objections about the prospect of moving to a bigger space in nine months.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707
The Regis Jesuit High School production of “Les Miserables”
Will run March 22, 23 and 24 at the campus, 6400 S. Lewiston Way in Aurora.
Information: regisjesuit.com/lesmiserables.