Monday, September 28, 1998
Memories, history of Royce Hall remind us of our purpose
COLUMN: Through three generations, trademark UCLA symbol houses
more than mere performances
To commemorate her 10th birthday, my mother saw a movie. Through
sculpted arches in muted red hues, she and 10 of her frilly,
party-dressed friends scurried past heavy doors, past ushers, and
into the darkened hall. Carol Jean, Lorna, Nancy, Pamela, and other
young nymphs of the ’50s were going to watch fairy tale cartoons in
Royce Hall.
My book-loving librarian of a grandma had encountered the
special children’s program on a bulletin board at the L.A. County
Library where she worked. Always up for a little intellectual
enlightenment for her progeny, she decided that a fairy tale
theater birthday at UCLA would beat out Pin the Tail on the Donkey,
any day. And so, the prepubescent caravan of girls made its merry
way to campus in a ’54 Chevy Bel-Air.
"I remember it was already dark in the theater," says the woman
who, for my purposes, will be known only as my mother. "Probably
because we were late, as usual. Probably because Uncle Bill bumped
into our car on the way there."
OK, so maybe her memories don’t consist of the delicate, muted
red and green mosaics of the ceilings, or the squirrely,
pseudo-Saxon inscription on the building’s Romanesque facade. So
what if my mother, remembers only the cartoons that graced the
stage when she was a precocious 10-year-old, not the structure that
at different times housed Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein or
Frank Sinatra, a trio that probably shared no other playhouse. So
maybe all my mother remembers is that it was dark, and as my
grandma, in mother hen mode, nudged the tidy little girls into the
reserved row, she swept an unassuming student usher along with
them.
"Pretty soon, mother heard a little voice saying, ‘No no no no!
I’m the usher!’" my birth-giver says, attributing a cute, shrill
tone to the usher’s response to grandma’s enthusiasm.
She pauses to purse her lips, and inserts a curt disclaimer
about the usher, in loyal defense of her mother. "She wasn’t very
tall, anyway."
When my grandmother’s green, squinting eyes adjusted to the
light, she realized that all the parents and children in the
expansive theater could easily see her heave a poor, short usher
into the row, like a mother cat dragging a kitten by the scruff.
Thus, as most semi-embarrassing moments do, the Royce story entered
my family’s folklore, punctuating a quiet moment at grandma’s house
which peppered a family reunion.
Forty-two years later, when I stepped on campus as a UCLA
freshman, all I could see of Royce Hall were construction tarps and
the plethora of promotional pictures slapped on every piece of UCLA
propaganda. There would be no usher story for me, unless an
other-worldly force lifted the menacing dust. From my brief
neophytic experience with Dykstra Hall and the De Neve Plaza
project, the other-wordly forces of building rehabilitation took
their sweet time. I figured when I graduated in four, five years,
the adorned doors would still remain closed.
Much to my surprise, they opened last spring. Checkered floors,
like the entryway in my childhood doll house, gleamed, and the
chandeliers outside the hall glowed like home fires. But I wasn’t
ready to accept Royce as the be all, end all UCLA landmark. Just
because its silhouette graces UCLA stationary doesn’t mean a
free-thinking student should automatically make Royce his or her
primary campus vision.
But this year, Royce has seemingly become a different kind of
symbol to more people than ever before. The Proposition 209
protests that led to the stoic building’s takeover gave Royce a
role beyond a performance venue or a lecture hall.
To some, though, Royce Hall will always be the place where the
Tommy Dorsey Band played. To others, it will be the place a famous
designer spoke for a record six hours. And to a select few, it will
be a place that unites generations with shaky cells of animated
fairy tales and starched birthday party dresses. Yet the building
will also be a symbol of another age, a sign representing academic
establishments that, while hospitable to the arts, have appeared to
some to be closed to ethnic difference.
Last spring, I went to my first Royce performance. Before the
premiere Israeli guitarist took the stage, I stood in awe as
hundreds in the audience sang the Israeli national anthem, the
dimmed stage lights airbrushing their faces. The Jewish men and
women, and even children, were united by their history in a place
with so much history of its own.
After the concert, the audience took to the quad for an Israeli
dance party, bathed in light from the Royce chandeliers and
shadowed by the College Library. As the dancers dipped and weaved
in circles to recorded Hebrew music, I realized that, like the
people who danced and smiled in the courtyard, my own conception of
Royce Hall, shadowed by the building’s historical glory, would be
molded by my own experience.
Royce is more than a portrait on a flyer or fodder for mug art
at the UCLA store. It is not the twin peak facade or the enveloping
balconies that makes the experience, but what should be very
obvious: the little memories one finds along the way. Without
trying to sound dramatic or preachy, that’s what college is all
about.
At a performance in the upcoming Royce season, see what stands
out to you. Maybe you’ll remember the gray inscription above the
stage. Maybe you’ll remember the way the seats squeak or the way
your heels click on the shiny wood floor. Maybe all you’ll remember
is that it was dark – which, in its own peculiar way, is a memory
in itself.
Dickerson is the 1998-1999 on-campus editor.Megan Dickerson
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