3 Questions With LiveArts Santa Fe President Vaughn Irving

As the state of the Midtown Campus remains in flux, a new-ish arts organization/consortium dubbed LiveArts Santa Fe hopes to transform the Greer Garson Theater Center into an all-encompassing education space, performance venue and resource for just about anybody. Enter Vaughn Irving, president of LiveArts and the former creative director for the Santa Fe Playhouse. Irving and his ragtag crew of theater pros, admin folk, former College of Santa Fe/Santa Fe University of Art & Design faculty and assorted others have been working on a plan for the space since 2018. Sure, COVID slowed things down, but at an upcoming open house on the campus (1-4 pm Saturday, Sept. 10. Free. Greer Garson Theater, 1600 St. Michael’s Drive), Santa Feans will have an opportunity to learn more, speak with members of LiveArts, fill out surveys and get a closer look at the long-misunderstood Greer Garson. We spoke with Irving to get a better idea of what’s up. This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

OK, give us the elevator pitch—who are you and what do you want?

LiveArts Santa Fe is an arts organization that wants to take over the Greer Garson Theater Center on the old CSF/SFUAD campus to open a pro conservatory training program for actors and technicians, a resident theater company—as well as community programs that offer affordable rental opportunities. We have a lot of alums involved, as well as former professors and employees, but also folks like me who grew up just going there and recognize the value of the facility to Santa Fe as a performing arts venue.

We started working on this in 2018. When you spend so much time in the theater, especially in educational programs, you become attached to the facility. As an artist, you’re working in there so much, it becomes part of your brand, almost. When [we] found out the school was closing, we had to make sure that it gets to be a performance art venue in the future. We were meeting with politicians, doing all sorts of things; we were part of the original [KDC/Cienda Partners] proposal when they were going to take over the campus. When they pulled out, we didn’t know what to do, but when we heard they were going to do a new RFP—well, that’s something we can handle as arts professionals. We are at a place where we can make a solid proposal. Right now we’re assuming the community pillar of the organization is going to have opportunities for youth. One of the points of this event is we’re going to have surveys and find out what people want to most see in that building.

Do you think Santa Fe can support another theater company? We have so many for the size of the town.

When it comes down to it, the presenting organizations are hungry for more space, so we’ve been talking with them; we’ve had these roundtable discussions, and most of these organizations are talking and saying, ‘There’s not enough availability at the...venues in town, and some are not perfect for what we want to do.’ What it looks like is going to be the structure is that the main stage is going to be available for dance, for music, for touring things and potentially theater companies will rent it from time to time. But we don’t really have a big enough theater audience to fill up a 500-seat venue, not for a three-week run, so there’s also the black box space that I think will be utilized by the theater community. That 90-seat black box, flexible space? I think will be of great appeal to the companies.

It’s unique to educational institutions a lot of times, these spaces existing. You don’t often see a community invest in a community center that has classrooms, workshop spaces, a stage. That’s either an established theater you’d only find in a big city, or it comes with an educational institution.

How can interested parties get involved?

Well, there are a number of ways, really, to get involved. First is we’re having the event on Saturday, Sept. 10 at Greer Garson, and that is sponsored by LiveArts, Theater Santa Fe and the City of Santa Fe. It’s an informational session with tours, because most people don’t know it exists. We’re going to have a presentation of what we’re planning to do and we’re going to be talking to people about what they want to see, too; a Q&A, and hopefully a representative from the city who can answer the nuts and bolts questions about the whole RFP process.

It’s a community education event, we want people to know what we’re planning so they can get ahold of us. People can sign up for our mailing list [at liveartssantafe.org]; they can talk to their elected officials about how they want to see this happen. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what the campus redevelopment is going to be. While all the city surveys have pointed to people caring about this venue remaining a performance venue, there hasn’t been a lot of movement, and we want to make sure the city knows that people care about it. Oh, and you can donate through our site. Or, I should say, right now we’re asking for pledges.