December, 2001 Volume 32, Issue 4
President's Message
ERIK HANSON
We are doing a lot to get one special house involved in the community again. The Whaley house has had more going on in the last few months than in the last four decades.
It feels like completing a circle to be involved in the Whaley House theatre project. I came to Historic Preservation through a degree in theatre and 20 years in the technical theatre trade. We were constantly dealing with aesthetic judgements about old things. You would be amazed at how much effort we spent at places like the Globe or the La Jolla Playhouse getting just the correct historic period salt shaker or shoe horn. But it was just theatre. Your best work, if it even made it to opening night, might have a 6-week run and be specifically noticed by three people. Historic Preservation is the opposite. We are sometimes allowed to work with the historic details of things that are be viewed by thousands of people daily, those that can afford tickets and those that can't. Unlike a theatre prop meant for one script and used for a month or two, a building or site can be in everybody's script for generations. It's not just "George Washington slept here" but "My uncle John passed this everyday on his way to work at Convair."
Now at the Whaley house we are dipping into both important worlds at the same time. A flash of Art and Emotion that will never be done just that way again and a 150 year old presence that will be there after some things we haven't dreamed of yet are gone. It seems like a good balance.
I'm so happy to have Mr. Welton Jones as a new member of SOHO's Board of Directors. Welton, the recently retired "Dean of San Diego Theatre Critics", in his later role as the Union-Tribune's Critic-at-Large wrote many inspiring pieces about historic preservation issues. I can't think of a more fitting person to direct SOHO's first production in our new upstairs theatre space.
The Gift of the Magi opened December 7 for a fleeting run.
