End of an Arts Era
A prosperous period in Austin's cultural history came to a painful close in 2003
By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 2, 2004
The poster child for all this loss was Austin Musical Theatre, which arrived on the scene in 1996 with big dreams of Broadway-caliber productions created locally and used the prosperity of the boom to make them real. But when that prosperity faded, so did AMT. After a last-ditch spectacular this fall -- The Wizard of Oz, produced with Charles H. Duggan under the name Broadway Texas -- AMT's board, looking at $300,000 in debt, turned out the lights.
The casualties on the creative scene were numerous: Star Costumes, theatre company iron belly muses, improv comedy troupe Well Hung Jury, Gallery 1313, Austin Spirit Gallery, and Spirit Echoes Gallery, to name a few. Added to those losses were the departures of several key figures in the cultural community: Neil Barclay from the UT Performing Arts Center; Martha Peters from the Art in Public Places program; Paul Beutel from the Paramount Theatre. And while there are deaths every year, more than a few of the ones in 2003 were of artists who had left a lasting mark on the arts in Austin: Tré Arenz, Kent Kennan, Mickey Mayfield, Martha Deatherage.
Of course, every ending means a new beginning, and the year also saw the arrival of Richard Buckley as artistic director for Austin Lyric Opera and Vincent Kitch as the city's cultural arts program manager, as well as the opening of spaces such as the Fresh Up Club and Arts on Real, not to mention numerous companies and artists contributing creativity to the city for the first time. Their legacy will be written in future years, however. For this year, they mostly just found a spot to land among the wreckage.
As hard as the year was, it produced a wealth of art, and the Chronicle Arts team saw a lot of it. Not surprisingly, they found much to celebrate, and on the following pages they provide a few lists of achievements worth recalling from the end of an era.