Bull City fills the bill

Durham's new center offers more ways for area arts lovers to book their calendars

DURHAM -- If recent arts seasons left your datebook overflowing, get ready for a flood.

The 2,800-seat Durham Performing Arts Center opens Nov. 30, and its first burst of bookings includes Bill Cosby, David Sedaris, B.B. King, a Chinese variety show and a "Rent" tour with two of the original Broadway stars. Those events will compete for attention with Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Bublé, Broadway touring shows and other large-scale productions in Raleigh's major venues.

"Our booking mission is really to have something for everyone," says Bob Klaus, general manager of the new center. "I just can't wait to open the doors and show Triangle theater and live entertainment fans what a fantastic home for entertainment DPAC will be."

Durham's $46.8 million investment in the arts brings bragging rights to the largest theater in the Carolinas. It tops Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium by 523 seats and roughly doubles the capacity of Duke University's Page Auditorium and UNC-CH's Memorial Hall.

The venue also draws power from its management muscle, especially from Nederlander Producing Company of America, a 96-year-old theatrical powerhouse with nine Broadway houses. Outside New York, Nederlander and its Durham operating partner, Rhode Island-based Professional Facilities Management, manage a combined 19 performance centers across the country.

Some of Broadway's hottest shows -- including "Wicked" and "Hairspray" -- are in Nederlander-owned theaters. That explains why "Wicked" will travel to Durham instead of Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh, which until now has been the Triangle's main presenter of Broadway touring productions -- including "The Lion King" and "The Phantom of the Opera." Durham will also get "The Color Purple" and "Legally Blonde."

The comfort of the seats and the acoustics of the hall remain untested. But it's clear that audiences will benefit from the sight lines in the 21st-century design. Steeply raked

seating gives short patrons an obstruction-free view and puts even the nosebleed sections close to the stage, albeit at acrophobia-inducing heights.

"I can't tell you how many cities we've gone to that have built the wrong building and then tried to figure out how to do Broadway in it," says Nederlander executive vice president Nick Scandalios. "This is a really well-thought-out project. I think the community will respond to that when they get to come into the building."

The center's newness contrasts with the 76 years of service from Raleigh's Memorial. Despite a $10 million renovation in 1990 and additional improvements since then, Memorial, one of four halls in the Progress Energy Center, has irregular acoustics and problematic sight lines, depending on where you sit.

But ultimately, the attractions on stage -- not the size or newness of the venues -- will drive audience choices.

The city of Raleigh, which owns the Progress Energy Center and the Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek, can counter Nederlander's power with its relationship with entertainment conglomerate Clear Channel Communications and its Live Nation concert booking, as well as a decade's worth of relationships built booking Broadway Series South.

Raleigh's Broadway series has also taken a strategic step in audience retention by joining forces with one-time competitor N.C. Theatre, which produces its own Broadway-style musicals. The co-producers recently secured a coveted 3-week run of the Broadway hit "Jersey Boys," about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, for summer 2009.

Memorial keeps a full slate of events -- at the end of August, 24 days were booked in December, for example. And as the opening nears, the Durham center posts frequent additions to its inaugural schedule. Klaus, the general manager, says Broadway subscription sales were at almost 5,000 by late August, including people from Greensboro and Wilmington.

"I think that speaks to this building being really a regional facility," Klaus says.

Reyn Bowman, president and CEO of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, expects that people who come to Durham for DPAC shows will generate about $5 million for the city in the first year.

"In the pantheon of cultural facilities," he says, "it'll give us one more arrow in the quiver, as far as being able to draw people."