In a sudden decision announced by Seattle University in early February, the school’s Lee Center for the Arts is planned to be demolished and replaced with a new teaching museum that will house the $300 million Hedreen Art Collection Donation.
University administration, heavily influenced by the donation and potential merger with Cornish College of the Arts, made the decision to place the new museum in the Lee Center’s current location without input from any theatre faculty or students. Both groups have been critical of the university and are mobilizing to fight the demolition.
The Lee Center for the Arts, located across from the Sinegal building on the corner of 12th and Marion, is a space that is integral to Seattle U’s theater program. It houses a black box theater, scene shop, green room, costume shop, sound and lighting booth and dressing rooms. The building is relatively new, built in 2006.
For the students who use the Lee Center, the space feels like home. Its role in fostering community and providing the access students need to put on performances is vital to the quality of productions and instruction.
In addition to highlighting many of the technical functions that the Lee Center provides, First-year Theatre Major and Actor Eiryn Kilroy emphasized its impact on the theater community.
“It’s a home for a lot of the theater majors, and people just involved in the theater,” Kilroy said. “We have people who hang out there, even when they’re not actively called or working, and it really is an important space to all of us. It holds a lot of memories.”
Shay Rutherford, a fourth-year film major and actor, echoed this sentiment.
“The Lee Center is a place that has been a second home for me. It is one of the most significant buildings, just in terms of being a place I’ve spent the most time in on campus,” Rutherford said.
The Lee Center is a unique theater space because it is a black box theater, which offers a different viewing experience and more versatility in format than a traditional stage does. Without the Center, the theatre program would lose access to many of these options.
The Lee Center also employs students on campus. Students get paid for a variety of positions within the center, providing them with a source of income. Continuing the Lee Center’s role as a teaching space, many of the technical jobs also give students skills that are applicable outside of the program.
“I have learned so many professional skills that I have carried with me into jobs outside of campus … that would be literally impossible if we did not have that space,” Isabelle Schunk, fourth-year theatre major and sound assistant, said.
The Lee Center is also used by other programs for classes like UCOR Fashion Lab and certain nursing courses. It’s additionally used by outside organizations and artists, with some utilizing the space to conduct workshops and others putting on theatrical, poetic and musical performances. The center’s proximity to campus also makes it easy for students who are not theater majors to still explore the arts and participate in the theatre program.
In an email to The Spectator, Provost Shane Martin explained that the decision to demolish the theater was made in the wake of Seattle U’s prospective plan to acquire Cornish College of the Arts.
“The relationship with Cornish will offer enhanced opportunities for our students and faculty in the arts. As addressed above, there are options for theater facilities within the Cornish footprint,” Martin wrote.
Originally, there were a few plans for the Lee Center and teaching museum, which included alternative options, such as different locations and the possibility of having the two spaces coexist.
Aly Bedford, the academic program coordinator for visual arts and performing arts, recalled initially learning of a potentially combined Lee Center and teaching museum facility.
“The conversations that we had never mentioned the complete demolition of Lee, and in fact, at one point there was a conversation of, ‘Oh, this will be great. We can have the Lee Center connected with the museum,’” Bedford said.
The conception of the Cornish acquisition provided additional context for the administration to change the plan without input from any theater faculty or students. In a joint email to The Spectator, the theatre program’s faculty and staff criticized the decision.
“I think a lot of people did take offense to the fact that higher admin, the board, or somebody up there making all the decisions were deciding what was a good space or not,” they wrote.
The university’s goal is to solve both the theater program’s need for performance venues and to find a space-conscious location for the new teaching museum. However, the plan to demolish the Lee Center and shift the theatre program to Cornish’s campus raises new challenges.
Cornish’s facilities are more than a mile away from Seattle U’s campus, which means that students would need to find transportation to get to their classes.
The distance would create scheduling challenges for students who are not theatre majors or have other classes, creating a barrier to entry for students not already entrenched in the program. Additionally, it poses a safety issue for students getting out of rehearsals or class late at night who need to find a safe way home.
The Lee Center is not a union theater, which means that shows are much cheaper to produce in comparison to unionized performance spaces like the Cornish Playhouse. Bedford noted that putting on a production at the Cornish Playhouse is more expensive, even for Cornish itself.
All of those issues are dependent on the Cornish merger going through, which is not guaranteed. The administration is still early in the process of the acquisition, meaning that the decision to build the new museum in place of the Lee Center could leave Seattle U without any theater facility if the merger falls through.
According to the theatre program’s faculty and staff joint statement, they were not included in any of the decision-making processes.
“Assumptions were made on the part of the administration that were incorrect, leading to their quiet decision to demolish the Lee Center. Had they reached out to any one of us at the start of their planning, we could have guided them to better decisions,” they wrote. “We could have told them at the start that this approach wouldn’t work (for various reasons), had they consulted us. To our knowledge, there still isn’t a solution from them at this point should the acquisition fall through.”
When asked about the theater program’s involvement in the process, Seattle U President Eduardo Peñalver wrote in an email to The Spectator about his plan to involve the theater program in the future.
“The views and expertise of the students, faculty and staff impacted by this move—which includes the Facilities team also located in the Lee Center—will inform the development and enhancement of substitute spaces to ensure the affected programs can continue their important work on behalf of Seattle University and our students,” Peñalver said.
The decision to demolish the Lee Center was shared with the students in a program-wide meeting Feb. 5 and sparked immediate outrage across the entire department. Many people in the meeting voiced their frustrations as the weight of the decision set in.
Kilroy believes that this decision is antithetical to the school’s values.
“To have grown up with the Jesuit and Catholic values, and to see my university, which promised to uphold them, so blatantly disregard them is deeply disappointing,” Kilroy said.
Several students felt similarly to Kilroy. Aubrey Thompson is a fourth-year theatre major who spoke to the heartbreak that this decision has caused.
“[Administration] doesn’t have any attachment to that space, and just forcibly migrating us out of that space is them just tearing out the soul of this Theatre department. And I think it’s very telling that I have not met a single person in the Seattle U Theater department who is amicable to this decision,” Thompson said.
Rhy Mack, a fourth-year creative writing major and theatre minor, discussed how the decision amplified existing fears around creative expression.
“It was a combination of anger and dread, because it just felt like just the cherry on top of everything else that is happening politically and the devaluing of the arts in general that I really thought was not happening at SU,” Mack said.
Rose Lindsey, a fourth-year creative writing major and theatre performance minor, positioned this decision as one that disregards students.
“[Students have] come to the school with the expectation of being able to get the education they want to in the theater. To then have a space quite literally ripped away from them is something that completely impedes that goal of [Seattle University’s],” Lindsey shared. “They’ve essentially thought with their wallets more than they have with their hearts about what matters to people… [the] CFO in the conversation with theater faculty didn’t even know what street corner the center was on.”
Hearing the announcement sparked a sense of unity and mobilization within the theatre program. In the Feb. 5 meeting, students started working together to find ways to save the Lee Center.
In a subsequent follow up meeting, theatre students organized committees and made plans to start raising awareness and standing up for the Lee Center and for the program.
“It very quickly became clear that this was not a decision any of us were going to take lying down, that we were going to protest this decision, that we were going to call for action,” Kilroy said.
Robin Wheeler, a fourth-year theatre and arts leadership double major and a stage director for the program, has been one of many students to step up and help lead student mobilization.
“Every single student I have talked to, which at this point has felt like hundreds, has been in shock and in devastation that the Lee Center is being destroyed,” Wheeler stated. “We pay so much money to be at the school. and I would like to see my money be used for what I want to do. I don’t want it to be going towards destroying what I love.”
Wheeler helped lead the follow-up meeting, where students collaborated to outline their goals and guiding principles. In an email to The Spectator, Wheeler sent a mission statement that the students created.
“We will follow the guidelines for free speech and engagement that pertain to SU campus and any other businesses, organizations, or public spaces where we conduct advocacy activities. We will speak about the situation using specific, accurate information to the best of our knowledge. We will not attempt to personally attack or unfairly criticize any SU leaders, trustees, or employees,” the statement read.
Faculty, alumni and community members are also planning to encourage the administration to reconsider their decision. Both program alumni and former faculty who helped to build the Lee Center plan to send letters to the administration voicing their dissent.
In the face of the University’s decision, the theater department is hoping to secure a future in which the school’s Jesuit values and artistic programs can not just coexist, but thrive.
“We are not fighting for nothing. We understand why the museum is important, but it can coexist. You can’t make more art by destroying it. We can have all the art in the world. I just hope they really understand that the Lee Center is our home. and there will be consequences in demolishing it,” Wheeler said.
The theater department’s winter quarter production, “Scratched Out,” was the first public showing of student resistance to the decision. At the box office, a petition with ‘SAVE THE LEE CENTER’ in bold letters was offered to theatergoers. Partway through the show, a showcase of scenes and songs prepared by both theatre and non-theatre students, two students gave a speech imploring university administration to reconsider the demolition.
It is too late for administration to have consulted the proper parties before announcing their decision. However, it is not too late for community resistance to have an impact on the future of the Lee Center.
