Save Auerbach Auditorium - Give us a space for arts on campus!

To Those it may concern,
This is a formal notification of dissatisfaction with the renovation of Auerbach
Auditorium (H125) and the projected removal of the stage. This letter will detail how we
(Dramatis Personae, the primary drafters of this document) found out about these renovations,
what a hard place this puts us in, what we are doing about it, and how this affects more than just
our organization.
Some background of who we are, we are Dramatis Personae, we are the remains of the
Drama Major (later minor) that used to exist in the college of arts and sciences. Auerbach
Auditorium has been the central home of our club for 30 years. It is also important to know that
we are the only non-hartt outlet for theatre for the campus community. This is important to
admissions because it shows prospective students that there is theatre outside of Hartt. We
believe in providing opportunities to create performance art to the whole campus wide
community; in order to do this, we must have safe spaces on campus to create art.
We found out the week of November 12th from our advisor Erin Striff that there will
possibly be renovations in Auerbach Auditorium this coming Spring of 2020. We had reached
out to her after the word renovation appeared in our inquiry into a "out of order" sign on the door
knob to the lighting booth. (As of writing this we still don't know the origin of the sign as it
obviously didn't come from facilities.)
Since then we have been tirelessly making plans and provisions for next semester,
booking other spaces, putting in an additional allocation application to student government to
receive funds for a storage unit nearby for all of our equipment, all while putting on our Fall
MainStage, I Hate Hamlet. But despite this challenge, we intend to go on, because not only are
we a club, we are a family. We will not be going anywhere.
It is not only us who are affected however. While perhaps Drama Club will be the most
affected, this space is used by so many people and organizations beyond our modest club. SAI,
PMA, Red Caps, Stop Laughing Mom, Hartt senior projects, Aerie, ENHP, A&S, student
projects, multiple worship groups, and more have utilized this stage. It is the ideal space on
campus for theatre, music, and presentations for its size, stage access, and its wing and backstage
areas. It is also a free space unlike Wilde, and is easily accessible unlike the HPAC black boxes.
This is a space that is well loved by many groups for many reasons, and for the most part we
have maintained it for the past 3 decades.
By getting rid of this performance space you risk alienating groups who operate on
campus, we have even had to consider moving our spring shows off campus due to lack of space.
While we know that we cannot stop this from happening, we would like to plead with
you to keep the stage, or help to create a new space on campus for our community. While it may
not seem important, it is truly one of the most important spaces on campus.

In addition to our signatures, we also have the signatures of the leaders of other clubs and
organizations that use the space and ones that support us in this endeavor.
Thank you very much for hearing us out, and we hope you make considerations for us
and for the campus as a whole. We love the University of Hartford so much, and we want to
continue doing what we love on a campus that we love.
All the best,
Dramatis Personae