Tour the Gary Soren Smith Center for Fine and Performing Arts at Ohlone College in Fremont, California, USA.
http://www.smithcenterpresents.com/

Produced: Undated (prior to 2007)

TRANSCRIPT:

CHRIS: Hi, Chris again. Thought I'd take you on a little virtual tour of the Smith Center. We're on the upper floor. The division offices for the faculty of the Theatre and Dance Department are here. Mine, Tom Blank's ... this is me falling over a chair. Tom Blank teaches Directing and Acting for the Camera.

This is the resource library for the department. It is, as you can see, absolutely choc-filled with scripts and textbooks for acting, directing, scene studies, and the technical theatre stuff.

Behind you is Mark Nelson's office. Mark Nelson is the senior member of the department. He's been here since God was a little boy; 1972 I believe. He is the resident scenic designer and he teaches a wide variety of classes.

This is Janel Tomblin-Brown's office. [She's with] the dance program.

JANEL: Hi!

CHRIS: Say "hi" again, Janel. Here she is counseling a troubled student.

JANEL: (Laughs)

CHRIS: Moving through ... Across the hallway is KOHL, the campus radio station and below that is the TV station. We have two fully-equipped digital television studios. All part of the Smith Center, so we have radio, TV, dance, theatre, and also music.

Anyway, as we move along, we're going to go down into the lobby. Mind the steps. And the Smith Center has three major performing spaces. We have the NUMMI Theatre here, we have the Jackson Theatre here, and then out here we have the amphitheater.

Let's go take a look at the amphitheater. That has on it the setup for our summer performing arts series. Every summer we do some kind of a show out on the amphitheater stage, and it is quite a production, no matter what it is.

Oh, I can see they're teaching a class out there right now, so let's just take a quick look. Here we have Happy Ohlone students learning on site. Hey, Happy Ohlone Students! Everybody wave!

You can see we have a pretty sophisticated lighting system we set up. This seats about 700 people and we have done everything from musical concerts to big huge theatrical musicals, to rock and roll bands, to campus-wide events out there. Everything happens around here.

So come on back in. The Smith Center also has an art gallery right here, and we frequently work in conjunction with the art program so that the gallery exhibits have a theme that links with the performances that we are doing.

As you can see, we have a sense of humor. This is where we were taking head shots for Dracula auditions. Dracula is our fall [2003] show.

We'll take you through the NUMMI Theatre and you can take a quick look at the work that's going on on the set of Dracula. It's a little dark here, so watch your step.