Reclaiming the Hancher experience

The wait is almost over.

On Monday, Hancher will announce the inaugural season for the new $113 million performing arts center that points in a new direction, uphill from the 1972 structure ruined in the 2008 floods.

A Broadway series, orchestras and sweeping dance productions too big for other area stages are returning to the lineup.

And so is the Hancher experience - the atmosphere and amenities that come from having a world-class home base. Even in the interim, Hancher still brought in world-class entertainment, still welcomed audiences to each Hancher event and endeavored to maintain the Hancher 'standard of excellence” to artists and audiences, said Chuck Swanson, Hancher's executive director since 2002 and a staff member since 1985.

'When we sat down and designed Hancher five years ago, we talked about the experience of going to a performing arts center,” he said.

'Over the years, it has definitely changed. It used to be that people would go and see something on stage and go home, but now people are after a full evening, so we thought about that in terms of the design of Hancher,” Swanson said.

'First of all, the building, of course, is very beautiful, but also very welcoming, very transparent. (Lead architect) Cesar Pelli just loved the setting, and I really feel like he brought together the indoors with the outdoors. I don't think we could have found a more perfect site for Hancher.”

‘HEARTS POUNDING'

'One of my goals is to get hearts pounding,” he said. 'I want it to be a one-of-a-kind experience that can really change lives, transform lives. It's such a wonderful way for people to connect. What I love more than anything is when people a month later or even a year later will talk about that Hancher experience, and they were there, together ...

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'That connection of being able to have a common experience, to me, that's really golden. That does change lives.”

It also helps from an educational standpoint, he said, citing the 'Out of Bounds” cyberbullying play and program Hancher commissioned from Working Group Theatre, presented at Riverside Theatre in 2014, then took around the state.

'A lot of the administrators and teachers said later, now that these students have had this common experience, it's an opportunity to relate back to that when there is a problem, and say, ‘Do you remember when we saw that play, do you remember what happened to that young girl?'

'That is one of the powers of the performing arts - that ‘hearts pounding' (effect). That's really important.”

PROGRAMMING

It's important to keep Hancher accessible to everyone, he said, through programming that spans the ages and genres - keeping ticket prices as affordable as possible, and opening the building for other uses, from weddings and meetings to club gatherings, cafe evening events, as well as a beautiful place where University of Iowa students can come to study.

One of the challenges is getting people who have only attended events off-site into the new building - breaking through the intimidation factor of a more formal setting that doesn't involve blankets and strollers and sitting in the grass to watch dance unfold on an outdoor stage.

Or getting people who didn't travel to the alternate venues to come back to Hancher, which in its new incarnation features 1,800 seats and some 185,000 square feet of interior space.

'Hancher is for everybody,” Swanson said. 'I want everybody to feel excitement for Hancher. I want everybody to take pride in Hancher.”

Creating a warm welcome will 'hopefully bring some real comfort to people who might not go or might feel like it's not for them,” he added. 'Everybody can come however they want to Hancher performances. There will be opportunities in the opening season for ‘black-tie optional.' That means you can come in black tie if you want to, but you don't have to.”

RELATIONSHIPS

Hancher has been on the receiving end of warm welcomes from all the alternate venues used in the Corridor and across the state in the years since the flood. It's never easy to bring in additional equipment or move into atypical locations, such as Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

But the upside to presenting the Boston Pops orchestra there in 2011 is that 3,500 flocked to the holiday concert - about 1,000 more than the former Hancher could accommodate.

'I couldn't have felt better about the camaraderie and the openness,” Swanson said of the collaborating venues and their staffs. 'It's the Iowa way. Everybody was just gracious and just as interested in helping any way they could to keep that Hancher experience alive.

'We are grateful to everybody along the way who has helped to make that happen. In a lot of ways, too, we've had a lot fun. We've met a lot of people and we have grown stronger from it, too.

'In our job as a presenter, it's very unusual not to have a home facility.

He said that his counterparts in other universities 'marveled at what we were able to do and some of the unique things we came up with. We had a performance at the Johnson County Fairgrounds (last year's 'All Recipes are Home” music and theater collaboration). That was a pretty unusual and a little bit scary thing to do, but we had great response. The artists loved it, and in the long run it's a memory.”

Hancher will continue to be a statewide presenter, but for the first couple years in the new building, the focus will be on presenting events there.

'I want to squeeze everything we can out of that building,” Swanson said. 'Everybody's waited so long, everybody's been very patient, but there's a lot of anticipation, a lot of excitement.”