Gift Opens Act 2 For New Arena Stage
Complex to Be Named After Donors Who Boosted Capital Campaign by $20 Million

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 7, 2006

In the end, it was the ingenuity of old friends that pushed Arena Stage to $100 million in its $120 million capital campaign. Philanthropists Gilbert and Jaylee Mead, longtime theater lovers, quietly pledged a $20 million gift, then challenged Arena's board to match it in a year's time.

Arena officials announced yesterday that they had done just that, hitting a turning point in a four-year fund drive that will allow the landmark regional theater to build a boldly designed complex. In a ceremony at the Arena's Kreeger Theater, board of directors President John M. Derrick Jr. and Chairman Wendy Farrow Raines said the complex would bear the Meads' name: Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater.

Dedicated to American plays, the complex is set to be completed in 2009.

When a screen was lowered with a representation of the future Arena with the Meads' name in lights, Gilbert Mead reached over and squeezed his wife's hand.

The couple have given the Arena campaign a total of nearly $35 million, which the theater's artistic director, Molly Smith, described as "the largest gift ever given to a regional theater in America."

The Meads are two of the most active supporters of the arts in Washington.

"Our interests in Arena are due largely to our appreciation of the kind of productions they are able to mount. We felt that this was the most exciting of the theaters in the Washington area," said Gilbert Mead, 76, a retired NASA physicist and an heir to the Consolidated Papers Inc. fortune. A pianist, he has been a musical conductor in amateur theater groups at NASA. Jaylee Mead, 77, is a retired NASA mathematician and astronomer, and performed with a NASA employees music group.

They have served on Arena's board for 14 years and have sponsored more than 15 productions at the theater. Jaylee Mead said yesterday they don't want to be the only supporters of arts groups, which is why they made their gift matching, with a strict deadline and a mandate that the match should have no more than 20 donors, with a half-million-dollar minimum.

She said that now that they are going public, "we have a nest egg that we think will be sufficient to really get us going," she said, explaining their intention to provide leadership, but not do the begging. "The greatest joy is to give while you live, so you can see what is happening with your money. You can enjoy the experience of new theater, all the productions being planned."

Other major donations included $7.5 million from a family that did not want to be named. Among those who gave at least $1 million were Josephine Ammerman, the widow of H. Max Ammerman, a Washington lawyer and one of the developers of Tysons Corner; Diane and Norman Bernstein, a life trustee of Arena and a major real estate developer; and Nancy and Donald deLaski, the founder of DelTek Systems software application firm.

The expansion will renovate the Fichandler and Kreeger theaters and add a 200-seat theater named the Cradle, which will showcase new American plays. That building will have 21 apartments for artists. Parking will move underground. A full-service cafe will be at the tip of the Kreeger. New acoustics will eliminate the sound of sirens from outdoors. All of the Arena functions, from set design to classroom teaching, will be contained on the theater campus.

"We needed much more than a facelift," Smith said.

The design by Bing Thom, who is based in Vancouver, B.C., wraps the structure in 50-foot-high windows that look out on Maine Avenue and Sixth Street SW. He designed a common lobby for all three theaters and topped the building with a single roof, with one edge pointing directly toward the Washington Monument. "It is just not a theater complex to see performances, but it's a theater complex that opens itself to the community," Thom said.

Pending the completion of construction bids and a financial package, officials said they hope to start building in 12 to 24 months and complete the project by the fall 2009 season.

Arena's plans call for the show to go on during construction.

Smith said they are thinking of phasing in the work.

"It is a complicated building. Also, in terms of phasing, we want to stay here in Southwest, and we would be performing in the Kreeger while they were working on the Fichlander. We want the audiences to be able to come down while we are building, and have hard-hat tours, and hard-hat matinees," Smith said. Arena has run a budgetary surplus in seven of the eight years that Smith has been at the theater.

The news that Arena had achieved 85 percent of its campaign goal was a relief to its administrators, as well as the theater community. The latter had worried about Arena's long silence since it decided to stay in Southwest in 1999 and expand its space. Arena, founded more than 50 years ago, has been located in Southwest for 47 years. Stanley Jackson, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said the project was a prime example of the value of the arts and economic renaissance in the Southwest neighborhood.

"This is the launch of the public phase of the campaign. Although we haven't been CIA-quiet, we have not gone out to our subscribers. It's been a limited scope so far," said Stephen Richard, Arena's executive director. The theater needs to raise an additional $20 million in the campaign, including a dedicated $5 million to add to its endowment.

Smith said she was relieved she could now talk about the gift, a development applauded by actors Robert Prosky and Brad Oscar at the ceremony.

"That kind of match excited our donors and they wanted to join with the Meads," Smith said. "That generosity really started it.

"The Meads are visionaries," she continued. "They had an idea that this was something that could and needed to be done."