The Sunderland Foundation is again helping fund improvements to Drury University’s Springfield campus.
The organization issued the university a $150,000 grant to create a new performance theater for student productions, according to a news release.
The school is planning what’s known as a black-box theater, a type of performance space with configurable seating to meet the needs of a production. The grant will pay for the majority of the project to be named the Sunderland Black Box Theater. The production space, which would be inside Drury’s O’Bannon Hall in the Mabee Performing Arts Center, also would include enhanced lighting and sound capabilities, adjacent dressing rooms and a control booth. A current music rehearsal space will be converted into the theater.
“We will have more flexibility in the new studio theater space and therefore more room for creativity when staging performances,” said Robin Schraft, Drury’s theater program director who’s also designing the theater, in the release. “It will open up more opportunities for our students to present their works to the community.”
The 60- to 100-seat theater will free up space at the school’s current performance center, which doubles as a classroom for acting and dance students. Larger productions will continue to be held in the Wilhoit Theater inside Breech Hall.
The renovation process is slated to begin later this year and wrap before the 2017-18 academic year starts, according to the release.
The Sunderland name also is on Drury’s
Paul Sunderland Recreation Field. Paul Sunderland, who worked professionally as president of Overland Park-based Ash Grove Cement Co., served on Drury's board of trustees 1952-83. He died in 2004 at age 107.
