Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center facts for kids

The Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center is a cool place for shows and events at Mercyhurst University. It's where people go to enjoy music, dance, and theater performances.

Cool Facts About the Center

• The Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center is found at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania.
• It has lots of seats! There are 792 regular seats, plus 24 special box seats, making a total of 816 spots for people to watch shows.
• This center was the very first theater in the United States to use geothermal energy. This means it uses heat from deep inside the Earth to keep the building warm in winter and cool in summer!
• The beautiful lights, called chandeliers, hanging above the opera boxes are super special. They are exactly like the ones in the famous Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. They were made in Austria from pure Crystal.

History of the Center

The Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center first opened its doors in February 1996. The very first show was a concert by a famous piano player named André Watts. It was a snowy day, but nearly 800 people came to watch him play on a piano that had been brought all the way from Pittsburgh.

Something funny happened during his performance! Mr. Watts stood up, and the audience was confused because the piano kept playing by itself! It turned out the piano keys were frozen. So, another piano was quickly brought out from backstage for him to finish the show. After that, André Watts joked that he had a "curse" and would never play at a grand opening again. He said that fire alarms and sprinklers had interrupted his performances at two other openings that same year!

When the center first opened in 1996, it had a small team of only two full-time and two part-time staff members. Back then, about 4,000 people visited each year to see around six or seven shows. These shows mostly featured amazing classical music artists like Kathleen Battle and the Juilliard String Quartet.

Now, many years later, the center has a bigger team of six full-time employees. They put on over one hundred events every year! You can see all kinds of performances, including jazz, dance, classical music, and world music. The center is also the only place in Erie that regularly shows movies. It hosts special film series, live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, and lectures from New York City. The entire arts complex at Mercyhurst is very big, covering more than 50,000 square feet!

The arts complex also includes other cool spaces. There's the Taylor Little Theatre, which is a "black-box" style theater, meaning it's very flexible for different kinds of shows. There's also the Walker Recital Hall and the recently made bigger Cummings Art Gallery. Right next to the Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center, you'll find the dance department with two dance studios called danceSpace, and the D'Angelo music department.

Different Performance Spaces

The Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center is part of a larger complex with several different areas for performances and art.

Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center

• This is the main theater.
• It has 792 seats, plus 24 special box seats.

Walker Recital Hall

• This hall can seat 250 people.
• It opened on October 27, 2002, with a two-hour piano concert by Lorin Hollander.

Taylor Little Theatre

• This theater has 251 seats.
• It was named in 1994 to honor Sister M. Eustace Taylor. She was a very dedicated person at Mercyhurst College and loved all kinds of arts and learning.

Cummings Art Gallery

• This gallery can hold about 150 people standing.
• It was named after Sister Angelica Cummings, who started the Art department at Mercyhurst. It opened in January 1984.

Who Works Here?

The Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center has seven full-time employees who help make all the shows happen!

Performing Arts Center (PAC) Team

• Director: Michael Fuhrman
• Assistant Director: Bruce Parkhurst
• Box Office Manager: Annette Gardner
• Assistant Marketing Manager: Michelle Ellia
• Production Manager: Greg Clepper
• Production Technician: Randy Stankey

Cummings Art Gallery Team

• Gallery Director: Robert Hagle

Amazing Past Performances

The center has welcomed many famous artists and groups over the years. Some of them have even won Grammy Awards! These include musicians like Maria Schneider, Paquito D’Rivera, and Eric Bibb.

World-famous dance groups like the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Pilobolus have performed on the D’Angelo Center stage. You can also see world music artists like Pink Martini and Jesse Cook.

One of the most popular and well-known shows in the center's history is the Japanese drumming group called Yamato. Yamato has visited Erie four times in seven years and has performed five sold-out shows for over 5,000 people! Everyone loves their powerful drumming.

The center also has a special program to teach young people about the arts. Through this program, over 6,300 students have had the chance to see amazing performances. These include African Drummers like Ba Cissoko, the Latin dance group Ballet Hispanico, and of course, Yamato. It's a great way for kids to experience different cultures and art forms!