Sisyphus had it easy. Or so it often seemed to the individuals who spent the last decade bringing to fruition Santa Monica College's new performing arts center.
The king of Corinth was merely doomed to forever push a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back down each time he reached the summit. He didn't also have to deal with fundraising amid a topsy-turvy economy and soaring prices for concrete and steel.
Ten years and $45 million after the idea for a world-class arts and education center was conceived, the space will officially open with a gala Saturday, featuring a performance by Broadway legend Barbara Cook.
For culture-craving Westsiders, the striking modernist center -- designed by Santa Monica architect Renzo Zecchetto in wood, glass, steel and stone -- represents a new locus for what artistic director Dale Franzen says will be first-rate dance, opera, theater and music, including new and unexpected collaborations.
In addition to classrooms and galleries, the complex features the 499-seat Broad Stage, which has the latest in acoustics and lighting, and the Edye Second Space, a 99-seat "black box" theater intended to serve as a laboratory for "mad talent and creative experiment," according to a promotional brochure.
The theaters were named for Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who last March supplied a $10-million endowment for programming and arts education.
Dustin Hoffman, an early supporter and Santa Monica College dropout who credits a theater class there with sparking his acting career, calls the complex a great achievement that the college hopes will serve as a cultural haven for decades to come.
"The goal is to live up to the responsibility of what exists there, what has been put there by the community, the patrons and Renzo," Hoffman, chairman of the Broad Stage's artistic advisory board, said in an interview from New York.
The ambitious effort came close to stumbling many times.
The idea was hatched 10 years ago in the ramshackle auditorium of the former Madison Elementary School on 11th Street at Santa Monica Boulevard, which Santa Monica College was leasing as a satellite campus. The 1994 Northridge earthquake had seriously damaged the structure, and the state had offered some money for repairs.
Piedad Robertson, then the college's president, ventured into the auditorium with Franzen, a former professional opera singer who had taught in the college's music department. Franzen walked onto the stage and began singing, her light lyric soprano filling the room.
