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Craterian seeks help with shopping list By BILL VARBLE The Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford is trying to raise $160,000 to complete a $550,000 wish list. Since quietly starting a fund-raising drive about two years ago -- not long after the theater's March 1997 opening -- the Craterian Performances Company has raised about $393,000 in cash or pledges to buy or build things that were postponed to get the theater opened on schedule and under budget. Remaining items are the installation of a stage lift system ($120,000), an acoustic shell ($80,000), additional sound equipment ($50,000), more lighting ($20,000) and the showers, sinks and counters ($24,000) needed to finish dressing rooms and makeup rooms for performers. The price tag comes to $294,000. With $134,000 of that either in hand or pledged, that leaves $160,000 still to be collected. "It's been a quiet effort," executive director Stephen McCandless said Monday. "We cooled our jets for a little while. We're bringing it to the public now." McCandless said the stage lift is the most important item. "We started with the most essential things and worked our way down," he said. "There's not a lot of pressure for the dressing rooms." It takes five crew members about five hours, often working at midnight, on overtime, to move a large section of the stage to whatever position is needed for the next show. "It's a huge hassle," McCandless said. The new lift systems will automatically position a 40-foot section of stage anywhere from orchestra pit level to even with the stage, then collapse out of sight and out of the way. Major donations to the drive to date include $125,000 from the Meyer Memorial Trust, $80,000 from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, $50,000 from the Ben B. Cheney Foundation and $25,500 from the Carpenter Foundation. More than $90,000 has been raised from 27 individuals. The Murdock grant matches each dollar raised privately with two dollars. Two rooms in the theater left undone when it opened have been completed with money raised so far in the drive and are now available to the public. One is called the Sabroso Forum, and the other is known as The Studio. The rooms rent for $25 an hour during business hours and $45 nights or weekends. They've been used for retreats, business meetings, company parties, receptions, workshops and lectures by groups ranging from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to the Rogue Valley Genealogical Society to a number of private companies. McCandless said the acoustic shell is a system of movable walls and ceilings that work together to create hard-walled surfaces on stage for better acoustics for musicians and audiences. "It's important to better accommodate Broadway road shows," he said. "The Rogue Valley Symphony feels it's critical to their use, too." He said theater officials would like to see the drive wrapped up in the next 12 months. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA