The Magic of Alan Chapman's Special Material!

Los Angeles Times — August 25, 2002

A Bid to Be Big Stage on Campus

Santa Monica College bets its theater will be a significant Westside addition

By JAN BRESLAUER

The invites were out, the caterers booked and the glossy centerpiece—a poster-sized image perched on an easel—was set up at the host couple’s house. Dale Franzen, director of the Madison Theater project, had everything ready for her upcoming party. In fact, she was looking forward to the chance to thank recent contributors to the proposed $15-million, 500-seat performing arts facility in Santa Monica.

Yet the Madison project’s honorary chairman, Dustin Hoffman, was wary of donor party business as usual. “Dustin said to me, ‘Let's not do any boring speeches,’” Franzen recalls. “But the purpose of a party is usually to thank new donors, so there's a lot of boring speeches that have to be made.”

What’s a project director to do? Armed with a list of donors’ names she envisioned as the raw stuff of lyrics, former opera singer Franzen enlisted the help of composer Alan Chapman. “I told him, ‘I want you to write me a song,’” she says. “I instigated what I’m going to do from here on in, which is, I sang the song at the party.”

Recalling the tale, Franzen can’t resist a reprise.

She sings, in a clarion soprano that resonates through the doors of her office and down the hallways of Santa Monica College’s Madison campus, on Santa Monica Boulevard between 10th and 11th streets, where the theater is to be built.

“And in between,” she adds, back in speaking voice, “I thanked all these donors.”

Brava! Apparently the ditty was a hit. “The next day, the phone was ringing off the hook,” Franzen recalls. “It’s not like I’m a shrinking violet anyway, but there’s a million people out there trying to get at money from the same people. Everybody remembers who I am now.”

Indeed. While artists have been singing for their supper for ages, it's not the usual modus operandi of arts administrators. Yet given the soft economy and a record number of Southland arts organizations trolling for dollars to pay for new projects or expansions, it may be just the kind of ingenuity that’s needed.

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