- [Woman Presenter] Illinois Stories is brought to you by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hello.

Welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield at the Hoogland Center for the Arts, where for the last year and a half, it has been a period of vast uncertainty.

What do you do with a center for the arts when you can't sell a ticket?

Where there are no arts?

Well, in that year and a half, a lot has been accomplished and they are setting to reopen.

So during this program, we'll talk about what has happened during that year and a half and we'll look ahead.

In fact, one of their most popular acts will open later this month and we'll get a little taste of that as well.

Gus Gordon, almost a year and a half - I know - since you were really forced to close because of the, of the virus and every other venue.

What was it like trying to keep an organization like this going with no ticket sales, no presence in the building, - Right.

- Just, what has helpless feeling to be a performing arts center and not be able to get in the building.

- Exactly.

You know, many people said, and it's true that an art center or a venue like ours would be the first to close and one of the last to reopen because we have and you can see all the seats in here.

We have a full auditorium, people sitting shoulder to shoulder, we have 457 seats in this space.

And we, you know, can't have them together in the middle of a pandemic.

So things are looking better and my fingers are crossed and I am knocking wood and I am hoping that we are still heading down the right path although with this Delta variant, it adds a whole new set of questions to it but it was scary.

I mean, we had to shut our doors when the stay at home order was issued.

We worked from home, but we came in once or twice a week just to make sure that the basement wasn't flooding or a pipe hadn't broken or that there hadn't been some kind of infestation or something.

So you had to keep checking in on the building and it was, you know, really scary at first because if you would ask me in March of 2020, would we be able to remain a float a year and a half later with no earned income, with no shows, no ticket sales, no classes, no rentals, no weddings, no any of those things.

I would have said, there's absolutely no way.

But, the main thing that the whole thing taught me, the whole pandemic taught me was you have to be flexible and the show doesn't always have to go on.

We're told as actors, the show must go on, in this case, well no, the show can be postponed and the world will continue to turn, life will go on.

So we made it through that phase.

We really survive because we left production mode.

Cause we couldn't produce any shows until later on when we started producing some, you know, streaming productions, but we went into fundraising mode and we reached out to the community and the community was incredible.

They came and they, they saw the need and they supported us.

Some of our longtime donors didn't even wait for a phone call or a letter.

They just said, here's a check.

I know you guys must be in trouble.

So here's something to help tide you over, which was absolutely amazing, the nicest thing.

And then, you know, again, you have to try to find the positive in any of these situations and one of the positives for me personally is it turned me into a grant writer and that had been something I never really was very good at or thought that I would be good at or even wanted to do, but it forced me to do that.

And we have had some very good success with that.

Now I do not credit any amazing ability on my part.

Grants have been fairly easy to get during this timeframe because you know of all the problems that we're all going through, but that has helped us survive too.

So we're actually about to reopen we're in a pretty stable place to move forward.

And if you would ask me again a year and a half ago, would we survive?

I would have said, no.

If I had known it would have last this long, but again, you adapt, you find new ways to operate.

And because of the support of the community we're still here.

- Yeah.

It gave it sort of mixed blessings in some way, it gave, it gave Hoogland an opportunity to make some changes, some updates, some repair, some things that they would have had to close the building to do while the building was already closed.

- Exactly.

So I'm standing here, you're standing with your next to the stage.

This stage badly needed to be restained.

- Right.

- It was all scuffed up.

So your crews came in, mostly volunteers came in, sanded this by hand, laid down the stain did the same thing with, with the floor that we're standing on here.

All of this would have had to, would have had closed the building down for a period of time to do all that.

Cause that sand gets everywhere.

- [Gus Gordon] Exactly.

- [Mark McDonald] And then you also had a situation here.

You talked about a possible flood, a boiler, right?

- Right.

- It actually happened didn't it?

- Well, you know, February 14th, we had a real strong cold snap and the coils on one of our air handlers broke because of the intense cold.

And it started flooding in our boiler room on the third floor and in our building, when it starts to flood on the third floor, it goes down to the second floor and the first floor.

And so it made it all the way down here.

- [Mark] Water always wins Gus.

- Water finds a way every single time.

And we had to, you know, address that and fortunately we were able to do it, but you made a great point.

We took the opportunity of being closed, to be proactive, to get the stage sanded professionally, we would have had to close for two weeks and cancel all our shows and we can't because we have shows every weekend in a normal time.

And so we really never had the time to do that, but we had volunteers help us.

So we were able to cut, you know, costs and save pennies.

And we did it ourselves, we sanded the stage, we stained it, we restained it, we worked on it for about five weeks and we wouldn't have had that luxury.

Board members, volunteers, you were out here helping us, Mark, you were great.

Tony Libri, Brian Mitchell, they're heads of our operations committee.

Brian actually repainted this floor almost single-handedly.

Kevin Ford, Dean Wilson, our building manager, myself.

I was a hot sweaty mess, but I'm usually a hot sweaty mess.

(Mark laughing) So that's no big change there.

But so many people came to help us.

And now when we reopen, you know, we've had the floors waxed all over the building.

We've been replacing light bulbs, the lights that are what we call the work lights in this space not that the show lights, the stage lights, but the ones that we leave on when we're not, you know, doing a show.

We replaced all of those with led tubes, we went from fluorescents to led so we've been making a conscious effort throughout the building to replace our lighting so it's more energy efficient.

So it's more cost-effective and we would not have been able to do these things and take over the building while this, while we would be normally operating, we took this opportunity, if you want to call it that to take care of the building and give it some TLC.

And that puts us in a much better position when we open up again.

- You know, one of the first performances it's going to be when you do open up again.

- Right.

- Is going to be dual pianos with Mark Gifford and Damien Kaplan.

- Sure, sure.

- They're they're, well-known at The Hoogland, and The Hoogland is partly known because of them.

I mean, they're, they're very identifiable with Hoogland.

So I asked them if they would join us on this program to do a couple of numbers for us.

So I want to listen to them now.

- So do I.

- Mark Gifford and Damian Kaplan, makeup, dual pianos, and they've been at this almost 10 years now, they're one of the most recognizable performers at the Hoogland and of course they know what it feels like to be performers and not be able to perform.

Guys, the last year and a half been a lot of fun, right?

- Hasn't it.

- Hasn't it.

- No.

- No.

I know, I know.

You know, but you did it.

Didn't give you a chance to prepare a little material.

Right?

And I'm holding like a year and a half where the new songs, 200 new songs that you guys are ready to do.

- Yeah.

- So it wasn't all bad, right?

- No, it kind of restarted us a little bit, kind of get our creative juices flowing again, basically back to the creating ways.

- The funniest, what I consider an oldie and what he considers an oldie are not on the same page in the same book, but that's been the fun of bringing the two together.

- Okay.

Well, I've promised our viewers that we're going to get a couple of numbers from you because you're one of the first performances when The Hoogland reopens again.

So let's get after it and let let's show the audience what you guys do.

Okay, - Great.

- Let's go.

(piano music) - Well, Leigh it's always a pleasure to hear real good music.

- Yeah, and aren't they the best?

- They are.

- They're wonderful.

- There's a lot of changes going on at The Hoogland and Gus and I were just discussing earlier about how it's sort of an opportunity.

It wasn't an opportunity you would wish for, but the building was closed and it gave lots of opportunities to make some repairs and changes that had to be made for years.

We're standing in the gallery space.

This is already a nice space, but it's going to be improved even more, isn't it?

- Right, right.

This is a gorgeous space.

As you look around, you can see, you know it's filled with light and it was of course named to be a gallery.

And it has been used as a gallery and we're turning it back into a gallery and in our time of our gala, it'll hopefully if everything works right, it'll be open and have been refurbished and we'll use it for a variety of purposes, including gatherings before and after events that we hold here at The Hoogland.

- But there will be art on the walls and that's, that's the plan is to, for it to become a gallery again.

- Yeah.

- Leigh, you were president through this president of the board of trustees through this whole mess.

- Yeah.

(laughing) - And, you know, you know, you were retained as the rest of the board was because it was such a clumsy time to try to name new board members.

- Right, right.

- But what was it like to try to steer the board through this and to keep them motivated and to keep them, you know, helping and to keep them one wanting to, because everybody was stuck at home, nothing was going on, the building was locked down.

I get, what was that like?

- Well, you know, I, I, I've worked in the mental health field my whole life, and I have always, probably seen challenges as opportunities or challenges as our time to understand what it means to live in that time of challenge.

And so for The Hoogland, I had come in being president a year ago, January and I had two major objectives.

One was to help us finish our go green campaign.

And the second was to explore ways in which The Hoogland could open our doors more to underserved populations in our community.

So we really just kept on that trajectory and I know as Gus has shared with you, or will be sharing with you some more, all of the go green activity that we were able to accomplish in this period of time.

And we've also done work on laying a foundation for how really we become more open to communities in our geographic area that haven't really grown up with the arts and, and might not see it as just a natural place to be.

So we had objectives that we could still accomplish during this period of time.

I mean, I remember the first time, you know, Gus and I met here and nobody was here because we were closing the building down and Gus walked in and said, "I think it's over, Leigh".

And we sat down and we began talking about how do you keep it alive?

And as I know, Gus has told you, the response was amazing from the community, which allowed us to do massive steps toward our go green campaign.

- And you talk about the, the receptive, the, the response from the community.

There, there were some big gifts.

- Yes.

- There were also some big grants.

Gus said he had to got to be a grant writer, got to be pretty darn good at it.

- Yes.

(Leigh laughing) - And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, but when you have an 80,000 square foot building and it's old and it needs attention and the utilities are expensive, you've got to have that kind of response.

And it's just amazing to me that The Hoogland will now reopen in a stable financial situation.

It's remarkable.

- Yeah, it is remarkable.

I mean, it takes a lot to keep this building going.

And of course, you know, our objective is to be a home for the arts and to help grow the arts.

So you've got to keep the theaters open.

You got to keep the building spaces open.

You've got to have heating and electricity.

- To 20 arts groups that call this home, Or 20 some arts call it home.

- That's right.

- They couldn't get into their space either, you know, during this time.

And did they give up?

No, they didn't give up.

They sort of arranged to come back when they could.

- Correct.

- So it's still, truly is a center for the arts.

- Right.

You know, the other thing that we did in this time and partially it's because of my mental health background is we did a series called "Seize the Date" where we focused on what are the challenges that are people experiencing in this time, and how did the arts help you through that?

So they're all in a library if you go to The Hoogland site, but there were just some beautiful pieces.

We started out with my good friend, Dave Shaw's visual creation, which we watched him do live on the, on the video and really talked about the importance of that cause he was drawing nature, the importance of attending to what you have available to you around you, which is nature and listening to the birds and paying attention to what is growing around you.

So that, that whole series, I don't remember how many we did.

We actually just finished the last one, but we released those all through last year.

And as I said, they're in a library, amazing things happen.

In fact, a couple of the pieces, Andrew who tap dances his way through one of them is going to be tap dancing for us on stage at the gala and this, the beautiful tune from "Wicked", the woman who sang that tune are going to sing it live on stage for the gala too, which reminds us that we all leave hand prints on each other's heart.

And so what was important through this period of time is that we support each other, that we couldn't perform live theater, but that we keep it in front of us.

And we did that through a variety of these kind of performances.

And so did a lot of other arts organizations also.

- Well, Leigh thank you for the visit.

It's going to be interesting when this place opens up again, to see how the community reacts and will they come out and will tickets be sold in the meantime, you and I get a chance to listen to dual pianos again for the program continues on.

- Yes.

- So thanks for the visit.

- Oh, you're welcome.

Thanks for asking.

- So we're in your rehearsal space right now.

We're at Sacred Heart Griffin, and, and, but when you go into The Hoogland, you cozy up two of those beautiful grand pianos.

- Nine foot Steinways, - Nine foot Steinway.

- Quarter of a million dollars a piece.

- Park those babies right next to each other.

- Its called butterflying.

- Yeah.

Is that, what's it called?

How does that feel when you get those things in place and when you start actually getting to pound around on them, is it pretty great?

- We're at home where we're supposed to be.

That is the right kind of instrument for these hands.

- We've got a couple of, well, we got a couple of Maseratis, let's see how fast they go.

- Okay.

So.

What's going to be different about the music that you're going to do going forward from now from the last nine years.

I mean, you did have a year and a half to prepare and to think about it and to say, do we change our, our approach?

Do we change our music?

What's, what's going to be different for people?

- I don't think that there's still anything that's different about us, we just have more to offer now.

So when hopefully more opportunities come, we just have a lot more varied repertoire to give people.

So they'll never see the same show twice.

It'll always be something different.

And if not with the music, at least with us, we never do the same thing twice.

- Do you ever just draw a blank?

- Are you kidding?

That's when he makes that face, like, all right, Gifford, what's going on in your head.

And he furrows his brow at me.

And there we go, there we go me more than him.

And I'll put that on age.

I have to rehearse more than he does.

But the joy of that is, is that he gets it and we'll find the time to do as many rehearsals as we need to so that when we walk on stage, it's just as smooth as it can possibly be.

- Well, show us smooth when you got time for one more number?

Show us smooth.

- We'll do it.

(piano music) - Great music Gus.

- Yeah.

Oh, Damien and Mark are always excellent.

They've been performing with us now for eight years or so, and we love having them back.

And we thought what a great group to have back for our first official big performance.

- Perfect.

- Yeah.

- Nos Gus, why are you standing next to a boiler?

- And that's a very good question.

And it's really hot in here.

These are brand new boilers that we just put in.

We had several grants that we applied for and several incredible donors.

Most many of which remained too anonymous, but they wished to remain anonymous rather.

But we put in these brand new boilers, our old boilers, way over there were from 1960s and they were basically antiques.

Now these are much more energy efficient.

We're going to save money.

We're going to have better control of the temperature in the building, not in the boiler room itself, because we don't have air in here, but in other rooms where it's important, where the public is.

- In the old boiler stay because they're too expensive to move out.

- Exactly.

- You couldn't even get them out of the building.

- They're huge.

You didn't really want me to get them out.

Yeah.

- And then this is also new over here.

This just goes to show, take the opportunity when you have to close down to do some really, really big stuff.

- Sure, sure.

Well, this is an air handler and this air handler controls the temperature in our main theater.

And you can see how big it is, but that's a big space.

- Yeah.

- You know, two stories and a big stage.

And we saw how big it was when we were down there earlier, but this allows the cool air to get to where it's supposed to go, allows the warm air to get to where it's supposed to go.

So this was a major project and this is interesting.

We had to get this in over here.

This is the garage door on our third floor and right across is the parking garage owned by downtown Springfield.

- Oh my goodness.

- Yeah.

And so they pull that concrete plug out and we had to carry it over.

And that's how they brought the new air handler in.

- Wow right.

That's imaginative.

And then we can't see it from here, but up on the roof, you also had to put new equipment in up there.

You call them chillers.

- [Gus] Exactly.

- [Mark] And that was a huge project because I remember it took months and months and months of planning and raising money to do that.

- It did.

And we were able to apply for a grant from the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, their tourism branch.

And we applied for a grant, we were able to get that we had had to raise the matching money.

So we got a grant for a hundred thousand.

We raised an additional a hundred thousand and we brought in those new air conditioners.

Now, again, I'm beginning to sweat in here because the air doesn't come into this particular room, but it comes in where the public is.

And so we can do shows in the summer and it will be much more comfortable than it had been in recent years.

- But let's go where it's cooler.

- Yes.

That's a good idea.

Thanks.

- Well, Gus it looks like theater three is under sort of a change.

- It is.

It is.

We're going to remodel theater three.

We're going to redo the carpeting.

We're going to paint the walls.

This is the balcony we're in right now.

We've removed the old church pews that were up here.

We're going to replace them with theater style seating and make it just a much more comfortable space.

You can tell there's an echo in here.

I hope that comes across on the, on the microphone, but we're going to put more carpeting in and that's going to help that problem and just make it look like a beautiful new show place.

- It already is, it's very interesting looking space.

I know when they, when they built this, they weren't thinking theater, but it sure lends itself to that very well.

- Right.

The Masonic temple that became The Hoogland Center for the Arts was a beautiful, beautiful building.

We've kept the feeling in this space and we want to honor that history and keep the stage the same way and all the beautiful architecture in here.

But we do want to spruce it up a little bit.

So people feel really comfortable when they come here.

- Well, Gus, thank you.

- Oh my pleasure, Mark.

- It's been a terrific experience.

It's good news.

It's always good to hear good news.

You know, when things are, life's coming back to normal again.

You know, it's been a year and a half almost since The Hoogland was forced and many other venues were forced to close.

Many of them thought we'll never get back.

Well, they are back with another Illinois Story in Springfield.

I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

- [Woman Presenter] Illinois Stories is brought to you by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you, thank you.