There are really two stories at the heart of the sale of The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts. One is about the rise, fall and loss of another of the citys cultural venues.
The second, and more disturbing tale, is about the explosive growth of a conservative evangelical Christian sect across this region and, indeed, across the continent. While other religious groups struggle to hold their own or continue to lose ground, for evangelicals business is booming.
The Centre, which was initially called the Ford Theatre, was built by Toronto-born Broadway impresario Garth Drabinsky as part of a chain of such venues including those in Toronto, New York and Chicago, as a part of a plan through his company Livent, to bring popular musicals to cities. The Ford Theatre, which finally opened here in 1995 and cost $27 million, closed three years later due to Drabinskys financial problems. Drabinsky would later be found guilty and jailed over charges of fraud and forgery.
In 2001, the building was sold for a fraction of its cost at $7.8 million to the Colorado-based Four Brothers Entertainment owned by four wealthy Asian-American doctors. Their plan was to primarily use the theatre to serve Vancouvers large Asian community by importing musical spectacles mostly from China. But that, too, apparently failed to be enough to pay the bills.
Then, as Courier readers learned first in a story broken by my colleague Mike Howell, a purchase sale agreement was announced in March to sell the building to Westside Church.
News of the sale caught cultural groups off guard, particularly the Goh Ballet Company, which intended to launch its annual Nutcracker production there next winter, and the Vancouver International Film Festival, which expected to use the Centre and its screen as one space to partly make up for the loss of its main venue at Granville 7. Both were informed their contracts were cancelled as a result of the agreement to sell.
But a debate continues within Vancouvers cultural community as to the value of the building. While some lament its loss, its particular design has been problematic from the beginning from its very poor acoustics to its cramped space backstage and its inadequate washroom facilities. All of which has led UBC theatre professor, critic and actor Jerry Wasserman to declare it is and always has been a white elephant.
A motion passed by city council this week to have staff encourage the new owners to share the space with members of Vancouvers cultural community lacks any real political muscle. It is more likely Westside Church will open its doors to others for purely economic reasons.
Indeed, film festival director Alan Franey says he is now negotiating with the church to regain the use of the theatre.
Which brings us to the second story: For a number of years a religious movement of evangelical Christians, which finds its roots south of the border and gives comfort to the most conservative of Republican politicians, has been ploughing fertile ground in the Lower Mainland.
That is in large part by developing a practice called church planting, an exercise in proselytizing that has relied on a symbiotic relationship with cultural venues and a number of the citys community centres; all of which welcome the funds they gain from renting out their space.
The Couriers Sandra Thomas first detailed the nature of these evangelical churches, and the Westside Church in particular, a year ago when she attended one if its services. They currently operate at two campuses: one is at the Park and Tilford Cineplex Odeon Theatre, the other is at the Arts Club on Granville Island.
What Thomas discovered was a congregation of hipsters complete with tattoos and metal piercings where iPads replace actual Bibles and debit cards replace cash donations. But the message was and is anything but hip and hardly consistent with the community values many of us share.
Women are not allowed to hold any ordained position in the church. Men run the show. Homosexuality is condemned as are divorce, a womans right to choose and pre-marital sex. All of which leads me to think what we are losing here should be of far less concern than what is taking its place.
