Brava! Brava! How a San Francisco theater troupe turned an abandoned vaudeville house into a blooming $4 million oasis. By Jean Schiffman Issue: June/July 2001 A vintage shot of the old San Francisco York movie palace before its Brava days. In 1996, Brava! For Women in the Arts, a feminist and multicultural presenting, producing and educational organization, set in motion an ambitious plan. The company would buy the old York movie palace in San Francisco’s primarily Latino, all-too-rapidly-gentrifying Mission District and turn it into the Brava Theatre Center. But artistic director Ellen Gavin and her gang could scarcely imagine what lay ahead. Construction costs originally estimated at $1.8 million quickly escalated. Gavin expects the final purchase and reconstruction bill to total about $4 million, big money for a nonprofit that operates on a $200,000 yearly budget. A worker explores the balcony. Gavin, an experienced and savvy arts administrator, community activist, and playwright, has been the artistic director of Brava since its inception in 1986 at Galeria de la Raza, also located in the Mission District. In fact, Gavin herself is a longtime Mission resident. Her primary motivation for taking on such a huge project, she says, was to create “a cultural foothold for the Mission District community. This community is threatened with cultural, economic and political displacement. If we can just say this stands for people of color, lesbians, gays, the people who live here with a range of economic incomes, if we can hopefully be here forever…” After years of blood, sweat, tears, fundraising and lobbying (the City of San Francisco ponied up about $900,000), it looks like Gavin’s dream has come true. Last February, after 13 months of remodeling (the contractor originally estimated six months), the company’s third show of the season, Diana Son’s Stop Kiss, was ready to open with the bulk of the construction work completed on the main sections (orchestra, lobby, restrooms). Only a few weeks earlier, Gavin was painting the cornices because the painters were behind schedule. The 13,000-square-foot, Moorish/Spanish-style building opened in 1926 as a vaudeville house and then became a movie palace. The shabby old lady had lain dormant for five years when Brava took over. “The toilets overflowed, the heat failed, and there were bugs,” Gavin told a reporter from the local daily. The five-panel mural that was uncovered by workers during the excavation process; it currently graces the lobby. But Gavin, in her late 40s and once a firefighter, is tough. When her volunteer project manager failed to work out, she took over. Brava’s classes (for 300 students annually) and productions were held elsewhere during the building phase. Only the season opener, Mabou Mines’ Belen: A Book Of Hours, was staged in the theater, with audiences picking their way through an unfinished lobby. The second show, by the popular Latino sketch comedy troupe Culture Clash, was relocated to another venue due to last-minute construction delays. Even at the Stop Kiss opening, the carpeting and elevator were not finished. Gavin says that what was once a “big cement box” is now a viable, four-level, thoroughly modern facility. There’s a rounded thrust stage built out from the original proscenium, a 250-seat orchestra and 221-seat mezzanine with reconfigured risers, a 99-seat black box on the mezzanine level (to be completed at a later date) for experimental work and classes, an acoustical wall, a new transformer with 1,200 amps of power, a catwalk system that’s safe enough for the kids in Brava’s youth training program, as well as all new plumbing and electrical work. But much of the existing detail remains: the old art deco light sconces; the original molding painted silver; the raw, exposed beams of the old ceiling; the original columns; modern surfaces juxtaposed with old, curved structures. Gavin, originally inspired by the remodeling of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, describes the cosmetic process as “sweeping and stabilizing but not painting over,” and adding faux finishes. “You leave layers, shellac them over, and you can read through the architectural elements of different eras,” she says. During the excavation process, workers uncovered a 1939 five-panel mural, gold leaf on plaster, representing the San Francisco skyline, Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores and more. It currently graces the lobby. Other finds included old newspaper clippings, make-up jars and tins of cigars sold at intermission. Ellen Gavin, artistic director of the Brava Theatre Center Such thrilling moments of discovery were perhaps outweighed by the nitty-gritty of raising money and dealing with the contractor, the architect, construction workers and distributors. “Distributors don’t come through,” grouses Gavin. “I picked out a carpet a year ago! Because of changes in the economy—the plant moved across country and the mill was down because of energy cuts—they’ve been giving me excuses for so long that we finally had to pick out another carpet! We’re waiting on tempered glass, three months overdue! Our distributors were four months late on railings for the staircase!” The list of tardy supplies goes on. “There’s no hunger in the construction business these days,” theorizes Gavin, referring to the Bay Area’s economic boom. “The entire construction industry is performing slowly because of too much work.” The interior of the old York theater And there were serious communication problems. “It’s a war,” she says. “Everyone is trying to shirk responsibility, and you yourself get into that position. You need a good project manager who’s even-keeled and can mediate between the construction company, the architect, and the owner, which is us. That person ended up being me. I had to know the drawings better than anyone else. I had to know the budget better than anyone else because they’ll keep coming at you with more expenses. I have literally moved certain projects through by going myself to the fire department, the building department, etc., when construction people sit on their hands and say it can’t be done. You have to talk to the plumber, the electrician. “And the bottom line is you need to raise more money than you think you need. For me, it would have been 25 percent more.” She cites, as an example, the unexpected necessity of installing a new electric vault, at about $40,000, into the street outside the theater. Fundraising continues apace, with such welcome donations as Meyer Labs’ $80,000 sound system. With the facility at last opened, the rewards are in the details: an expanded women’s restroom with tri-colored 1930s tiles and a chandelier. A 40-foot, full-color neon sign outside. Shades of yellow in the lobby shifting into deep green, blue and aubergine of the plush velvet chairs. A theater for the ages. Gavin’s own play, Apertura Modotti, about the life of early 20th-century actress and photographer Tina Modotti, closed the season. “This is a beautiful facility,” sighs Gavin. For her, the best part is just “sitting and experiencing it with audience members.” sd Jean Schiffman is a San Francisco-based freelance writer who specializes in the arts.