The Cupertino Courier
Community
New Foothill College theater is part of Betty Lohman's legacy
By Heather Zimmerman
One could say that "home is where the heart is" when it comes to Foothill College's new Lohman Theatre and its benefactor, the late philanthropist Betty Lohman. The site of Lohman's former home is now occupied by the theater named for her, and Lohman did love theater--that was well-known even before her $1 million bequest to Foothill's theater arts programs.
Lohman and her husband, John Holt Lohman, lived on a Los Altos Hills ranch that would later be home to Foothill College. The Lohman House stood on the Foothill campus until 2005.
Foothill College celebrates the grand opening of the Lohman Theatre on Feb. 23 with Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, presented by Foothill Music Theatre. The show runs through March 16 at Foothill College, 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills.
Jay Manley, the founder of Foothill Music Theatre, directs My Fair Lady. Before he retired, Manley was a longtime teacher at Foothill College, and also served as chairman of the theater arts department. He met Lohman about 20 years ago when she took part in annual theater tours to New York and London led by Manley and his partner, Vance Martin. My Fair Lady is presented in Lohman's memory.
"Because our benefactor, Betty Lohman, was a huge fan of musical theater, we wanted to choose a musical--we thought it would be a splashy and celebratory way to open the theater. And we're kind of thinking of Betty Lohman as our fair lady," Manley says. He notes that he also chose My Fair Lady because it's considered one of the finest works of musical theater, and as it was based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, the show reflects both musical and dramatic genres.
"This theater will be the home for the drama department and all its dramatic efforts," Manley says, "and so I was interested in doing something that also made the tie-in to dramatic literature."
To fit the intimate Lohman Theatre, My Fair Lady will be presented in a unique "jewel-box" version: fully staged and in costume, but with two grand pianos instead of an orchestra providing musical accompaniment.
The Lohman Theatre seats up to 155 people and boasts an advanced audio system and Internet access throughout. The theater was built with $3 million in funds from Measure E, a 10-year plan approved by voters in 1999 to construct new facilities and renovate existing buildings at Foothill and De Anza colleges.
The Lohman Theatre's size and amenities should give Foothill's theater programs more flexibility than the campus' other performance spaces. The 1,000-seat Smithwick Theatre is oversized for many smaller-scale productions, and a classroom made into a studio theater was too small and didn't have such facilities as dressing rooms. "This gives us a real theater to do our small musicals in, which we've never had before, so it's revolutionary in that sense," Manley says.
Unfortunately, Lohman did not see the theater built. She died in February 2005, two months before the groundbreaking. However, Lohman's legacy is not only the theater, but also a $1 million endowment bequeathed to Foothill's theater arts programs. The Foothill-De Anza Community Colleges Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, is overseeing the endowment. Currently, Lohman's endowment provides about $50,000 a year to Foothill's theater programs.
"We manage it to grow, so that it will keep pace with inflation and always supply that level of support every year, which for a community college is very substantial," say Marie Fox, the foundation's executive director.
The funds will support such diverse needs as buying equipment and supplies for sets and costumes, and purchasing scripts and other educational resources.
"Typically, when you build a theater, building it is half the battle," Fox says. "It's supporting the work that goes on in the theater on an ongoing basis that becomes paramount once the building is up."
'My Fair Lady' tickets are $10-$24. For more information, call 650.949.7360 or www.foothillmusicals.com.