Safe spaces
I frequent the Overture Center and was surprised last fall when they instituted searches of some patrons (“Safety Concerns,” 1/12/2017). There are many reasons to stop this practice:
- The searches are not useful. Only bags and purses are searched, which means the vast majority of searches are of women and those in wheelchairs. I feel ashamed watching these searches while men walk in freely.
- There is no evidence it’s needed. Of the 85 public mass shootings since 1982, none were in a performing arts theater.
- It’s inconvenient. I recently watched several disabled patrons slowly travel by three locked doors on a cold and snowy night to get to the door with security. Then they waited in line for screening.
- It’s an expensive and ongoing budget drain. Is this the best way to spend our arts dollars?
- It sends a message that the Overture Center is an unsafe place, which isn’t true. It used to be you were welcomed on entry to the Overture. Now you are told you are under suspicion.
We do not live in a city of security screenings. In 2001 and 2011 screenings were implemented in the Capitol, and they were promptly removed. The City County Building removed its screeners too. Don’t fix a problem the Overture Center doesn’t have. Just as with our other public buildings, the costs to its valued space and goodwill are too high.
Janet Murphy (via email)
Secret spaces
I write to you on behalf of Teatro Décimo Piso, the theater group of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UW-Madison. We were thrilled to see and read the recent article detailing and revealing the history of past theater spaces in Madison (“Madison’s Lost Theaters,” 1/12/2017). The section on Bascom 272 in particular caught our attention. The article suggested that this space would someday be reawakened when needed, and in fact it was. This past March, our group revived the theater space to present a three-act piece called Tararí by Spanish playwright Valentín Andrés Álvarez. Due to our limited funding, we often must find innovative ways to stage our pieces, and this “secret” theater space provided the ideal solution for our production. We knew right away that this space would inspire our work when we were able to enter the historic backstage area to see the time-worn mechanisms. The history of this university theater space still lives on. We hope to again stage a new production in March of this year, keeping the tradition of this unique space alive.
Marin Laufenberg
Ph.D. candidate in Latin American literature, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UW-Madison (via email)