A Capitol Idea

the arts

kent county

A Capitol Idea Dover’s long-neglected Capitol Theater, built at the turn of the century, is undergoing a $4 million renovation to make it a center for the performing arts

by Rob Crimmins

Cold air passes through broken windows and pigeons roost at the top of the balcony next to the projection booth. The dressing rooms are dark and the smell of popcorn is long gone. Dover’s Capitol Theater has seen much better days.

From the huge balcony it’s easy to imagine the magicians and comedians of Vaudeville on the proscenium stage in 1904, the year the theater opened. You can picture the organist accompanying a silent movie or soldiers with their sweethearts in 1944 and rows of people in 3D glasses in the sixties. Voices and music and the sound of a soft-shoe on the wooden

stage hang in the cold air and in the memories of many of Dover’s residents.

Those memories and a palpable excitement about what’s to come are behind the renovation effort now underway. Local architects and craftsmen, businessmen and women, arts groups, the City of Dover and the State of Delaware are all part of a program to renovate the theater and vitalize the performing arts in Kent and Sussex counties.

Many of the people involved have such fond memories of their old theater that they can’t even express what it would mean to go back. But you can see the hope. Looking into their eyes, it’s easy to believe that it will happen.

Nostalgia would be reason enough for many. Going back would be nice but Frank Fantini, President of Friends of the Capitol Theater and his Managing Director Jeff Fulgham are more interested in looking ahead.

Along with dozens of other prominent Doverites they see a thriving Capitol Theater as the center of gravity for the arts, downtown revitalization and even regional development.

Their vision isn’t clouded by stories of the past. What’s gone before is making their vision of the future Friends president Frank Fantini and managing director Jeff Fulgham envision the theater as a center for local development.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

DELAWARE TODAY March 1999

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clearer, and that’s very encouraging for others with interest in the Capitol Theater.

“They have been very savvy in how they have approached the project”, says Ken Wesler, Managing Director of The Grand Opera House in Wilmington. Wesler has consulted with the Capitol’s management and has given them valuable insight into the business of the arts.

“The profit margins for the arts are very, very low,” says Wesler.

“So they have to make sure they don’t promise equipment that they don’t actually install. That, to me is a classic error. They have to open a viable theater (not one lacking features because) high operating costs kills these kinds of operations.

If they operate within a budget that is sustainable and realistic in light of the income opportunities either by presentation or rental they have a good shot at making it work.”

Nostalgia meets reality. Can Dover support such an operation?

Interest in the arts is growing in Dover. The theater will probably thrive but until they actually get going it’s hard to say.

Wesler warns that surveys and research are no substitute for experience. “You’ve got to get in there and breath the air and watch performances and try different things.”

The best way to determine what the market wants is to build risk into the programming. “At the Grand we win some and we lose some and overall we’re successful”.

Fantini’s and Fulgham’s programming plan for the Capitol lends itself to that kind of discovery. The activities at the theater will fall within three categories: performing arts, film, and for lack of a better term, community service.

The first category will include performers from the Grand. A formal relationship with the Grand

is possible but a more passive arrangement could be as effective.

Wesler points out , “It costs a lot to get an artist to perform at the Grand, or anywhere else, but once they are in a region it is easier to get them in another theater in the area.”

The Capitol will also attract most of the Wilmington based performance companies.

David Edelman, Managing Director of the Delaware Theatre Company which is a professional, producing, theater company, is very willing to take their productions to Dover. A key to the Capitol’s success may be its associations with The Grand Opera House and The Delaware Theatre Company as well as Opera Delaware, The Delaware Russian Ballet, The Delaware Symphony and even The Delaware Art Museum. All are hopeful that the Capitol Theater will provide a downstate venue and exhibit space.

Frank Fantini: “They are all very enthusiastic about it. Because they want to be Delaware’s opera company or Delaware’s theater company but they’re not. They’re actually Wilmington’s because they’re trapped. As hard as they try to bring people from south of the canal to Wilmington they only reach a miniscule part of that audience because most people won’t make the trip. What this will do is release them.”

Wesler says, “People are going to be amazed at what they’re going to be able to present there. If the people down there are interested why couldn’t James Gallway or Itzhak Perlman play.”

There is the question of capacity.

The Grand can seat eleven-hundred compared to a little over six-hundred for the Capitol. They will need to be creative on how to pay for big names like Perlman. Technicians

and managers of touring companies may curse Dover’s colonial width streets and the parking is barely adequate but those are small obstacles.

So is the stage size which, at first glance, seems small. But the vaudeville acts for which it was designed had plenty of space and as it turns out there is even enough room for a bounding Russian. The Capitol’s stage measures twenty-seven feet from front to back versus the Grand at thirty-eight but at fifty-one feet across, it’s considerably wider than the stage at the Grand which is only forty-two.

Stage size is a concern at both theaters but Wesler points out, “There are plenty of operas and theatrical productions that are made to fit virtually any size stage and as a matter of fact, the Capitol has something the Grand doesn’t have; fly.” In the Capitol, the distance from the top of the proscenium to the wooden grid that supports scenery and rigging is eighteen feet.

“The ability to fly scenery means they can put on productions that we couldn’t stage here.”

Stage size is not a concern for Stephen Gunzenhauser, Music Director and Conductor of the Delaware Symphony who is looking forward to conducting chamber music, chamber orchestra and symphonyettas at the Capitol. He has been told that the acoustics at the theater are outstanding.

The second part of their programming plan is film. When George M. Schwartz bought the theater in the twenties he converted it to a movie house and the revived theater will show many of the classics that Schwartz screened.

Names like Bogart, Gable, The Three Stooges and John Ford will scroll across the Capitol’s screen and so will the names of today’s DELAWARE TODAY March 1999

independent directors and producers. They also plan on providing for the younger audience by scheduling children’s movies and plays.

Other Ken Wesler observations include, “He who signs the check controls the art. The market has to drive the programming. Define art, everybody has a different definition. More theaters fail than succeed because the management makes programming selections based on their own tastes. If the motivation is a revival of the theater than it has a better chance to succeed than if the motivation is art.”

The third programming category, community service, recognizes some of those who sign the checks.

The auditorium and stage will be used by businesses and the State for seminars, presentations, meetings and workshops. The ten-thousand square foot addition, which is primarily for dressing rooms and rehearsal space will also accommodate meetings and exhibits.

Businesses are looking forward to using the facility but they are even more enthusiastic about how the new theater, which will be called The Capitol Theater and Schwartz Center For The Performing Arts, will improve Dover’s “quality of life.” For Central Delaware to continue to attract business and for those businesses to recruit employees the cultural atmosphere needs to improve. Most of the nearly $3,000,000 that the theater has received so far has been from foundations and state and municipal development funds but Mellon Bank, Wilmington Trust, PNC Bank and NationsBank have also been significant contributors.

Terry Jackson of Dover was hired as the “Architect of Record”. He’s assembled a team of experts that includes Homsey Architects, Inc. of Wilmington, specialists in historic

preservation, and Sachs Morgan Studio, a world renowned designer of theaters whose credits include the John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Art in Washington, D.C. and the Ford Center in New York.

While drawing up the demolition plans, Jackson and his associate Bill Lenihan are crawling into the cubbyholes and recesses that haven’t seen light for seventy-five years. Bill has found tickets, candy wrappers and Coke bottles that the collectors of such things would appreciate.

They’ve even found treasures, like dozens of original light fixtures carefully packed and stored in small rooms above the stage.

Terry and Bill are literally in touch with the past. It’s a bit dusty but they like it. Someone else, perhaps some unlucky volunteer, will sweep up after the pigeons. If she lives in Dover she probably won’t mind.

DELAWARE TODAY March 1999