Oakland Tech unveils $1.4M auditorium update, reviving performing arts program

One night in 2004, a bunch of fogeys from Oakland Technical Excessive College organized a turkey dinner fundraiser.

The nonprofit that ran an after-school drama program wanted cash to proceed for one more semester. The mother and father had an even bigger thought: What if they might rally sufficient help to revitalize all the performing arts program at Tech?

“On the finish of the night time we had a performing arts committee,” stated Katrina Brekke-Miesner, mother or father of two Oakland Tech alumni and member of the committee.

What began as an try to lift cash for some part-time drama and music lecturers grew to become a twenty-year effort to present this system fashionable services during which to carry out. The group of mother or father volunteers, which modified over time as their kids graduated and moved on, in the end raised $1.4 million to outfit the college’s auditorium with state-of-the-art sound and lighting techniques and new seating, Brekke-Miesner stated.

Final week the college held a ceremony to commemorate the work and unveil the up to date excavations.

“I am so excited that we now have this particular place that may be a part of our group, a spot that we are able to all come again to,” Denise Saddler, interim superintendent of Oakland Unified, stated in the course of the ceremony. “We’ve got Oakland Tech on Broadway.”

The state takeover and austerity measures of the early 2000s in Oakland Unified College District decimated Oakland Tech’s performing arts program. On the time, Oakland Tech may solely afford to pay for a choir director by making use of for grants, says Sheilagh Andujar, who served as the college’s principal from 2003 to 2013.

“All of us thought, ‘That is ridiculous. Right here we’re in Oakland, such a middle of creativity, and we do not have a performing arts program,'” Andujar instructed The Oaklandside.

Over the following few years, the college group raised $225,000 to rent music, dance and drama lecturers, Brekke-Miesner stated. However the performing arts program had been on maintain for therefore lengthy that the corridor had change into dilapidated and was used extra as a cupboard space than as a stage. The listing of wanted repairs was lengthy: new seats, new paint, carpet, fashionable lighting and sound techniques, and a brand new projector and display.

The mother or father group fashioned a corridor committee in 2006 and requested professionals for recommendation on acoustics and tools, stated Daniel Brekke, who served as a volunteer challenge supervisor for the corridor upgrades.

The ultimate a part of the challenge was the acquisition of latest chairs, which have been put in this yr. The committee offered seat plates to cowl prices, and at the moment engravings seem on 259 of the auditorium’s 336 seats, honoring 1934 Tech alumni.

“Each time our workforce constructed one thing, youngsters would are available with large eyes and say, ‘Thanks. Thanks for realizing that we want greater than what now we have,’” says Brekke, whose kids attended Oakland Tech from 2004 to 2014. “My message to them was all the time that I’m right here now, however sooner or later it’s your job to present again as effectively, all in due time.”

The committee remains to be there accepting seat sponsorshipand donations will help a upkeep fund for the auditorium.

With new services, the Oakland Tech group hopes the college’s performing arts program can develop and supply college students with artistic alternatives – not solely on stage, but in addition behind the scenes by means of the college. Tech Techies program, which provides college students expertise in sound, lighting, costumes and different technical arts. In January and February, Oakland Tech invitations the group to a pupil manufacturing of Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 play, “Arsenic and Previous Lace.”

“We’ve got college students with wonderful expertise and the performing and visible arts are simply as necessary as the tutorial program,” Andujar stated. “It motivates the scholars to return to highschool and be a part of one thing massive.”