press release

State-of-the-Art Theater: VMI gets a place to perform

With the opening of VMI's $22 million Marshall Hall, Center for Leadership & Ethics, campus thespians have finally found a home.

By Kevin Kittredge
The Roanoke Times and World News

Published: July 14, 2009

For years, you never knew where Virginia Military Institute might put on a play.

It might be in the engineering building, Nichols Hall, or the basketball arena or the student center, Lejeune Hall. In the '90s, the campus thespians did plays in a converted classroom in Scott Shipp Hall -- until the hall underwent renovations and they had to find another home.

"We got booted out," VMI Theater Director Joellen Bland said, laughing.

Those days are done.

With the opening of VMI's $22 million Marshall Hall, Center for Leadership & Ethics this year, a lot of things at the fabled institute for educating citizen soldiers have finally found a home.

The center, which was privately funded by multiple donors, includes meeting facilities, a banquet hall, a Hall of Valor honoring cadets who showed bravery in battle, and the building's centerpiece -- the 500-seat Gillis Theater.

The theater features state-of-the-art sound and lighting, two dressing rooms, and a rehearsal and storage room. Designed for multiple uses, it will host not only future VMI theater productions but many other things as well. The stage, for example, also includes a movie screen.

The building's overarching purpose is to further the college's mission of leadership and character development -- but it will be made available to organizations outside VMI as well, said center director Charles Brower. Already chalked in for the months and years ahead are lectures, conferences, symposiums, movies and concerts. The Roanoke College-based Kandinsky Trio is among those scheduled to perform.

"It's something we've needed for a long time," Brower said.

A home at last

The new building was dedicated with fanfare on May 1. VMI Superintendent J.H. Binford Peay told a crowd that included former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel that it was "a conference facility worthy of a nationally ranked program." Brower called the building "impressive" and "remarkable," and pledged it would host a "robust program of symposia, conferences and speakers that directly relate to leadership and character development."

But no one was happier than Bland, who has directed almost every VMI theater production since 1982.

Theater has always been something of an afterthought at VMI. Even now, the school has no theater department. Theater is considered a club, under the auspices of the VMI cadet life office. Bland is a paid part-time staff person.

"That's just the way it is. It's a very demanding environment that doesn't lend itself to a lot of that," said VMI spokesman Stewart MacInnis, when asked why the college had no theater department.

Theater department or no, it has always had thespians, willing to do the not-for-credit work at the end of a strenuous day, just because they love it. For decades, they performed wherever they could find a little space, sometimes lugging a portable stage.

Prospects brightened considerably when a VMI graduate named Leslie Gillis bequeathed the school $1 million for a theater in his will. Gillis, who graduated in 1929 and died in 1987, was a member of the school's Dramatic Club in the 1920s. He had the lead role in several plays, according to an article in the Alumni Review.

The new theater is named for him.

"That money helped build this theater. We are very grateful," said Bland, whose troupe will perform "The Mousetrap" by Agatha Christie starting Wednesday night.

The Broadway-sized theater space is not all theirs, of course. The stage is equipped with two curtains, one of them located halfway back, that can be closed to screen off the theatrical sets so Powerpoint presentations or speeches can be given, or movies can be shown.

"That's just the price we have to pay for having our own space," Bland said. "It's all very tricky. But it's worth it to be here when we can be here."

The plush, spacious new facility has made things easier for the thespians in more ways than one. Unless they are doing dinner theater and working with a caterer who needs an exact head count, they never take reservations anymore for theater seating, Bland said.

Why bother? "With a 500-seat theater," she said, "we never run out of room."  

VMDO Architects was founded in 1976 and is the youngest firm to receive the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Virginia Architecture Award, the most prestigious honor given by the Virginia Society of American Institute of Architects.

For further information, interview, and photography opportunities in reference to this project and VMDO Architects, please contact William Bishop at 434.296.5684, email at bishop@vmdo.com.