And Liberty for all: Astoria centerpiece wins for best theater, music venue

Published 11:40 am Wednesday, February 14, 2018

The Liberty Theatre

• Best Live Theater

Runner-up: Astor Street Opry Co., Astoria

Honorable mention: Coaster Theatre Playhouse, Cannon Beach

• Best Music Venue

Runner-up: Pickled Fish

Honorable mention: Fort George Brewery, Astoria

It is the jewel in the crown of downtown Astoria.

The Liberty Theatre forms the centerpiece of the renaissance of a community that has changed its appearance and outlook in the last 20 years.

Coast Weekend readers have voted it the best music venue on the North Coast — an award it has won before — and this year as the best theater.

The brace of accolades delighted Jennifer Crockett, who has spent the last year and a half as executive director. Her joy in learning of such community support for the facility launched her into an enthusiastic listing of what is to come next.

The Liberty has been the core venue for the expanding Astoria Musical Festival, which will see its 16th year in June. But Crockett has been working to make it a year-round venue for music.

Last month, the Liberty hosted two Music Festival favorites, cellist Sergey Antonov and pianist Ilya Kazantsev, for a Russian New Year performance. The 2017-18 season saw the debut of a nine-concert classical music series.

When the Schubert Ensemble of London offered to perform at the Liberty, newspaper executive Steve Forrester, who led the campaign to restore the building, teamed with local chamber music host Ray Lund to create something new.

“We decided to use that as a springboard to a larger classical series,” Forrester said.

The four remaining dates for classical shows are a matinee Feb. 17 and evening shows March 16, April 26 and May 25. For details, see libertyastoria.org.

Groups that play at the Liberty are encouraged to lead music workshops at Astoria High School, a tradition Crockett is hoping to broaden to other districts.

The homegrown North Coast Symphonic Band and the visiting U.S. Air Force Jazz Band are among those that have graced the Liberty’s stage. She has worked to book other visiting musical groups with an Oregon and Washington following.

“It’s a beautiful space and you get a different experience to a club,” she said. “It’s a lot more intimate than in a club where everybody is talking and you have a hard time connecting with the band.”

Crockett is a clarinetist who is married to a violinist, so her interest goes way beyond her full-time job of the day-to-day running of the theater. Her mother and grandmother were musical and a field trip to the Chicago Symphony’s “Nutcracker” helped spark a life-long interest in the arts.

In the last year, 14,900 people attended 76 events at the Liberty; surveys reveal about three out of four were locals. Organizers of 29 private events also rented the theater.

Crockett believes two significant projects will increase those numbers.

Grants will pay for a new sound system. Incredibly, and possibly unknown to many patrons, the Liberty has had to rent a sound system for every visiting show. That will end.

“After we have our own system, every show will sound the same and every show will be great — wherever you sit in the theater,” Crockett said. “That will help with the variety of shows we can bring in because a lot of people turn us down.”

Next, a capital campaign is planned to install rigging and lighting above the stage to add flexibility to staging.

“We will be able to do theater, opera, ballet and all sorts of stuff,” she said.

The campaign to raise those funds begins this fall. “It’s exciting. It will increase the amount of theater exponentially. We have turned down touring theater and opera because we could not meet their needs.”

As an example, the creative BodyVox dance troupe from Portland returned for the fourth time to entertain an audience with a Halloween-themed show last October, “but it was only 20 percent of their show,” Crockett said.

She credits Larry Bryant, the Liberty’s resident technical jack-of-all-trades, with preparing the way for this important change. “He is kind of the unsung hero of the Liberty Theatre,” she said.

During the major renovation, which took place in phases spanning well over a dozen years, she said Bryant convinced restoration coordinators to ensure that the stage was topped by weight-bearing steel beams. A better heating and ventilation system was installed, but at his urging it was placed so it did not occupy important space above the stage.

Crockett believes patrons will support this next enhancement. “We have all the framework there, now we get the guts.”

Despite the lack of facilities for overhead stage lighting or elaborate rigging for scenery, the Liberty has hosted many performances, including the annual summer visit of the Missoula Children’s Theatre during which a couple of college actors recruit a cast of local children and spend one week rehearsing and staging a play.

Other acting happens quarterly in the McTavish Room, the beautifully appointed ballroom on the same level as the balcony.

“Our director, Sen Incavo, finds scripts that he likes,” Crockett explained. Gender topics or scripts addressing rape and other serious issues have drawn audiences who appreciate thought-provoking evenings in a readers theater format. “We try to pick scripts that will start conversations,” she said. “He was unsure about how far to push the envelope and I said, ‘Let’s blow the doors off!’

“People like it, ticket sales are up and we receive donations towards readers theater.”

The Astoria School of Ballet has been based there since 2008; other regular performers include the Oregon Ballet Theater. The theater has also hosted Astoria Pride galas.

As the annual FisherPoets Gathering expanded and its organizers sought bigger venues for the February showcase, the Liberty was a natural. Crockett admits she didn’t expect a huge audience the first year, but was delighted to have to quickly open up more seats as crowds filed in. This month, a second night has been added.

“I like events that offer a mix, and I like it when people come in and they say they have never been in here before,” she said. “We are trying to get everybody involved. It is the community’s theater — we want to be the theater of the community.”

The Liberty Theatre is located at 1203 Commercial, Astoria.

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