Letters to the Editor 8-21-14

Thanks for the support of fireworks
Editor:   
I know this letter should have gotten into the newspaper sooner, but it seems like this summer has flown by. The Cloverdale Lions Club would like to thank every organization and individual who sent donations to help underwrite the cost of this year’s 4th of July Fireworks display. We couldn’t produce the show without your support.
In many small communities, professional fireworks displays have gone by the wayside as costs to produce them keep rising. We are very grateful that the display here has taken place for nearly 40 years. And we look forward the next 40 years. Again, thank you for your support. We’ll see you next year for another spectacular fireworks display.
Chuck Sibert and Tex Dickens,
on behalf of the Cloverdale Lions Club
A theatre is more than a building
A theatre is more than a building. It is a vessel that contains all the spirits who inhabit it night in and night out. Everything and everybody from a doomed explorer to a redeemed miser, from a wacky medium to a blind woman in peril, from a would be tenor pretending to be a world famous one, to three guys in Converse sneakers performing all of Shakespeare’s plays in 90 minutes.
A theatre is more than a building. It is the modern descendant of the communal fire where neighbors gather to hear stories. It’s also a reflection of the group leader, the person who has the experience and vision to choose what stories will be told, what truths will be illuminated, what foibles will entertain and enlighten.
A theatre is more than a building. And at the heart of a theatre is the artistic director; the person who has in his or her mind, a direction for the theatre, as the title implies — no, as it demands. Like many achievements of lasting value, this process is best handled solo, not by committee or consensus, the enemy of innovation and inspiration.
Cloverdale Performing Arts Center had one of the best artistic directors around in Jim De Priest. He has spent six plus decades in theatre, onstage, directing, acting, producing; in short, a life in the theatre. He was instrumental in getting CPAC built and rounding up a dedicated group of theatre artists to create those stories to share in that building.
A theatre artistic director does more than pick plays (two comedies, two dramas and a musical please; would you like fries with that?); he or she sets the tone of a theatre, and the good ones draw actors, designers, directors in to work with him or her. No one is going to make it rich doing theatre in Sonoma County, so when we choose to commit 100 plus hours over the course of eight plus weeks, many of us driving 40 miles round trip every day to rehearse and perform, we do it because we believe in the people or person guiding the theatre. Such is Jim’s power. He asks you to do a play, and by God, you figure out a way to do it. It’s not always smooth, it’s not without conflict, it’s not for the faint of heart, but you work with Jim because he has integrity, honor, compassion, decades of insights and experience and the heart of an artist. And he displays something that seems not to have been reciprocated: respect.
So, my question to CPAC is, what the hell are you thinking?
I refer, of course, to Jim’s so-called resignation.
I have had the great fortune of working with Jim for more than 40 productions, and the even greater honor of calling him a close friend since the day we met some 15 years ago. Without compromising Jim’s trust, I know that your story about the “resignation” was misleading at the very least. Ask yourselves, especially those of you who know him: is Jim a man who would voluntarily resign with two shows left in a season?
I don’t pretend to know exactly why the CPAC board appears so eager to get Jim out of the way, but I do know that Jim has done so much for this theatre, for this community and for this county that, whatever the issues may be, he has earned the right to leave on his own terms. I do not believe that has been the case here. Rather, this “transition” was handled with an astounding lack of grace, courtesy, integrity and decency.
A theatre is more than a building. Cloverdale has an amazing arts building. However, it no longer has the life, heart and soul of that building. In the most ignominious way possible, that soul has been asked to vacate the premises. Even if the why is valid, it doesn’t excuse the how.
I hope the good people of Cloverdale can find a few minutes soon to thank Jim for all he has done for this place, to express dismay at the clumsily enforced exit from his — from your — theatre, and to wish him well on future endeavors. I, for one, can’t wait until the next time we get to collaborate, saddened only by the knowledge that it will nevermore be on the Cloverdale stage.
Steven David Martin is the Artistic Director of the Raven Players in Healdsburg.