Amid Plans for PaliHi Rebuild, ‘Don’t Forget the Arts’

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Palisades Charter High School took their first step toward a major campus overhaul this year, as the school’s Board of Trustees commissioned blueprints for a large-scale construction project that would modernize the nearly 60-year-old school’s grounds.

PaliHi’s Visual and Performing Arts Department—“VAPA” for short—has been down this road before.

In 2006, the Board of Trustees was already preparing for campus modernization, commissioning plans for their own wide-scale re-build. That’s before a significant personnel shake-up, both on the Board and in PaliHi’s administration. Fundraising efforts were derailed and the vision was ultimately muddled. The plans of 2006 never came to fruition.

Vicky Francis, a now-retired PaliHi drama teacher of more than 20 years, served on the Board of Trustees from 2005 to 2010. She advocated ardently for the campus re-build of 2006 to bring a true, state-of-the-art performance space to PaliHi.

Though she’s no longer on the board, Francis remains an active volunteer at the school. With word of a new re-build, she’s leading the charge to keep her beloved VAPA department a priority in any campus renovations.

For a school with PaliHi’s performing arts pedigree—counting celebrated artists from J.J. Abrams to Broadway’s Heléne Yorke as alumni—the school has always sorely needed better facilities for student-artists. The campus was built without a true theater, opting instead for a style of multi-purpose room sometimes called a “cafetorium.” Thespians the world-over cringe.

Naturally, moving performances out of Mercer Hall (the aforementioned multi-purpose room) is VAPA’s top priority. That means building a true theater—one that matches the consistently high quality of PaliHi’s drama, dance and orchestral performances. Francis and her colleagues envision seats for between 500 and 600 people, a stage large enough to fit the school’s entire orchestra and high-tech lighting, rigged from above.

The staging would be flexible, allowing PaliHi’s varied and innovative performances room to breathe. Acoustically and visually, the auditorium would finally provide a fitting venue for the school’s performing arts.

Francis said it’s important to understand that this would be a true community space—a way for the school to bring Palisadians from off the campus in, and a valuable commodity to rent out for events, not unlike the school’s Stadium by the Sea.

An early rendering of this dream building—dubbed “The Dolphin”—shows the theater covered in green ivy, along with solar panels to help cut energy costs.

The Dolphin is the crown jewel, but VAPA’s faculty is also desperately hoping for attached classrooms and studios that specifically cater to the arts. At a recent VAPA and Arts Complex Committee meeting, Francis and teachers from the department shared their varied needs—some that have remained the same for decades.

Natural light for the artists, sprung floors and mirrors for the dancers, practice rooms for the orchestra—even just some extra storage space: all of these sorely needed accommodations would help Pali’s young artists grow.

“It affects the scale of what we can produce,” explained Angelica Pereyra, an art teacher and longtime committee member. “They should be able to make anything that they envision a reality.”

But first, VAPA will need to make their complex a reality.

They have support from the school’s administration—Principal and Executive Director Pam Magee has noted the department’s “legacy of excellence” and the need for “modern facilities to ensure educational equity” for the arts. And three early renderings of the campus re-build—created by the Irvine-based firm gkkworks—all included new performing arts complexes.

As in 2006, however, money will be the key. For VAPA to secure some of the loftier gifts on its wish list, department members said it will need to be a heavyweight in the school’s fundraising efforts for the project as a whole.

For that, they’re hoping they can rely on their vast network of successful alumni artists—particularly those who have stayed local. In one of the performance capitals of the world, they hope a plea to “remember the arts” resonates in the hearts—and pocketbooks—of Palisadians.