There’s a certain feeling in the theater right before the curtain goes up. With a blend of excitement, curiosity and anticipation, the audience stirs, murmurs and then settles in to enjoy two hours of what poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “a willing suspension of disbelief.” As part of an audience, we accept what we see on stage as reality, and we open ourselves to new experiences, new ways of thinking and feeling and a world far away from the everyday.

At Michigan State University’s Wharton Center, we are offered that escape on a regular basis—and without having to go all the way to New York City, Chicago or Detroit to enjoy it. From Shakespeare to jazz, Ibsen to Bob the Builder and Grease to the Russian National Ballet, the world of the arts comes to East Lansing and invites us all to be a part of it. It’s an invitation the Lansing area (and the entire mid-Michigan region) finds impossible to resist.

Wharton Center enjoys the distinction of being Michigan’s largest performing arts venue as well as having the largest programming schedule of any independent performing arts center affiliated with a university in the country. Wharton Center hosts a lineup of more than 100 performances each season. The building itself, originally opened in 1982, is currently undergoing extensive renovation to enlarge its common areas and administrative offices and add dressing rooms. When renovation is completed in May, there will be a much grander lobby with a façade featuring four stories of glass. The Wharton Center building itself includes two stages, the Cobb Great Hall and the Pasant Theatre. In the center of campus, historic Fairchild Theatre houses the Fairchild stage and the MSU Concert Auditorium.

The performance schedule from December of 2008 to May of 2009 astonishes both for its depth and its breadth. Family favorites include the Greater Lansing Ballet Company presenting The Nutcracker, the children’s plays Nate the Great and Max and Ruby, as well as the universally acclaimed Lion King, which was previously featured at Wharton Center for a record seven weeks. Music lovers of all persuasions can enjoy MSU College of Music vocal and instrumental groups as well as performances by jazz groups, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, Carmen presented by the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Tokyo String Quartet and violinist Joshua Bell, just to name a few. Dance aficionados will enjoy DanceBrazil and the Russian National Ballet. For theater lovers, there’s Grease, Legally Blonde and Spring Awakening. For a complete rundown of the pleasures awaiting the Wharton audience, visit their website at www.whartoncenter.com.

As if that weren’t enough, Wharton Center has long offered educational opportunities to the community at large. Currently, these include the Act One school series, providing performing arts enrichment opportunities for students in grades K-8; the Act One family series offering weekend matinee performances for parents and grandparents to introduce children to the performing arts; Jazz Kats-Jazz for Kids featuring artists from MSU’s School of Music ensemble, the professors of jazz and illustrating the basic elements of jazz; the Young Playwright’s festival, inviting high school students to write one-act plays to present to a juried competition; preview lectures before performances and additional educational opportunities for learners of all ages.

According to the executive director, Michael Brand, “We’re proud of our role as the premiere entertainment venue in mid-Michigan. But that’s only part of our role. Besides bringing Broadway to East Lansing, our educational programs for our own students and for the community are essential to our mission. What we’ve done perhaps less well is integrate and collaborate both within the university and with the community at large.”

Bob Hoffman, marketing manager, adds, “In pursuit of that goal, we have a new initiative in place that we’re very excited about. As part of Wharton Center’s mission to entertain, educate and engage, the MSU Federal Credit Union Institute for Art and Creativity at Wharton Center is a new initiative to provide lifelong learning programs both at Wharton Center and throughout the state for audiences of all ages.”
Bert Goldstein, director of the institute since its official inception in July, says, “What Mike [Brand] and Diane [Baribeau, Wharton Center general manager] decided to do with this new institute was to create an atmosphere where education, creativity and energy come together with collaborative efforts to expand education programs for all learners. We are doing this through collaboration with the colleges within MSU. Right now, we are working with 12 deans, not all of whom are in colleges traditionally affiliated with the performing arts.

“We are planning to try some producing, both new and old work. We want to take some risks and give artists the chance to create exciting work. And we’ll be doing this not just in Lansing but also around the state.”

Goldstein adds, “The heart of the institute is the residency program. One of these programs, the Stratford residency, is in its third year and is continuing to grow and evolve. This year, we brought eight actors from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada for a week to work with our students and community members, providing opportunities to meet with professional theater artists, gain insight into the creative process and participate in master classes and lecture-demonstrations.”

Joel King, MSU graduate student working toward a Master’s of Fine Arts, served this year as student coordinator and liaison with the Stratford Festival. He says, “This was an invaluable experience. Not only were we able to attend workshops with the actors and technicians, but we were also able to spend personal time with the artists. We worked mostly on Glass Menagerie and Romeo and Juliet with actors and artists who had just been in those productions in Stratford. Some of us had the extraordinary opportunity to work with actor Brian Bedford, whose portrayal of Lear at the Stratford Festival was universally acclaimed. It was truly a life-changing experience.”

Goldstein adds, “Laura Bell Bundy, who played the lead in the original cast of Legally Blonde and received a Tony nomination for that role, and her co-star Paul Canaan developed a residency called Take It From the Top, a series of workshops for actors, singers and dancers, both teenagers and adults. They’ll be coming back again. This year, we’ll also be bringing back Tiempo Libre, a Grammy-nominated Latin jazz group and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, who last year offered a workshop at Everett High School. These are just a few of the exciting residency programs we are planning.”

Brand says, “We’ve been thinking about this new institute for three years, talking to the deans and asking, ‘How can we integrate all these great artists better into the university and individual classrooms to enhance the student experience?’ It’s a collaboration among the faculty, the artist and the institute. Next year, we’ll have 11 residencies, including Terence Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter and composer who has worked with Spike Lee on all his films.”

“We’re also connecting with local theater and performing groups,” Goldstein adds. “Diane Newman at Happendance and I are working together to introduce a dance curriculum into a local school for about four months. We’d like to expand this to include theater and music. As funding continues to be a problem here in Michigan, we have to be advocates for the arts in the schools and in the community.”

Brand agrees. “In these trying times, MSU needs to be a beacon for the arts. It’s part of our outreach mission as a land grant institution and something we take very seriously.”