Maria Muldaur says it's all about the vibe, not the size. And the Gulfport vibe says: Who cares so much about profits?
By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published May 12, 2004
GULFPORT - Midnight at the Oasis turns 30 in June. On Friday, the artist who recorded that hit song showed she is still in top form.
Maria Muldaur, a rich alto with range who has recorded with Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Wonder, took the audience on a tour of nearly forgotten blues legends from Leadbelly to Memphis Minnie Smith and Mississippi John Hurt.
It was Muldaur's first visit here, but maybe not her last. "People have been telling me about Gulfport," she said between bites of cold chicken in her dressing room at the Catherine A. Hickman Theater, "that there's this hidden little sort of bohemian community. And I feel there's quite a good chance I might move here."
The city-owned and -operated theater at 5301 27th Ave. S remains something of a best-kept secret in its fourth season. Darcey Olivera, president of Rootsong Productions, the nonprofit organization that booked Muldaur, said concertgoers sometimes need directions not only to the theater but to Gulfport, which they didn't know existed.
Theater groups such as Gulfport Community Players and the Ritalin Players have staged dozens of plays since the Hickman's opening in December 2000, and the musical acts have included Grammy-nominated country singer Adrienne Young, blues-picking Roy Book Binder, a St. Petersburg resident, and Gulfport's Tracy Purcell, who has played piano and sung since the 1930s.
Despite those success stories, the theater generates only $4,000 to $5,000 a year for the city, against operating costs of more than $100,000.
"It's a quality of life question," explained Jim O'Reilly, the community services director. "It's a quality of life (asset) to have something like that."
The idea of a local theater started in the early 1990s with the waterfront redevelopment task force. Eileen Navarro, president of the Gulfport Community Players, was on that committee, whose members wanted to increase property values on the waterfront and up Beach Boulevard.
The task force at first considered adding a theater to the recreation center, but residents wanted the space for day care and other services. City Council member Ted Phillips then led another initiative, pursuing state grants to build a theater from scratch.
The city managed to secure those grants and kicked in some of its own money to pay for the $970,000 facility. Planners decided to connect the theater with the existing Multi-Purpose Senior Center in the wide boulevard space known as Clymer Park.
"We tried to make it a model for a small city," Phillips said.
With 173 seats (or 180, if all wheelchair spaces are filled), the theater is certainly small. For comparison, thespians at Lakewood Senior High School play to more than 800 seats, empty or filled, in the school's auditorium.
Anyone can rent the theater for rates ranging from $30 an hour in the morning to $450 on a Friday or Saturday evening. Nonprofit organizations such as Rootsong get one-third knocked off. Frequent renters such as Gulfport Community Players receive additional discounts. Organizers of exhibits and high school graduations also have found that the Hickman theater meets their needs.
"Word is getting around," said Marlene Shaw, the city's events manager.
At the Multi-Purpose Senior Center, Frances LaValla, 77, and Mary Serrian, 78, said they had seen four theatrical performances only a short walk from their game of tiles, and gave the theater and the Gulfport players high marks.
Minutes before Friday's 9 p.m. show time, late arrivers were still walking purposefully past those standing in line and insinuating themselves near the double doors to the theater.
Steve Smith and Lynda Kavy (artist and musician, respectively) joked about how the line in which they were standing had disintegrated.
Stubs for the $20 general admission tickets for the Muldaur concert bore no seat numbers, noted Smith, 55. So "you have to fight for a seat."
"But there is no bad seat," Kavy, 51, replied.
Muldaur saved her most famous hit until next to last. Then she introduced "a really odd song my guitar player wrote" that was added as an afterthought to an album in 1974 because the producer thought she needed something "medium-tempo."
Midnight at the Oasis topped out at No. 2 on the charts, achieving platinum record status with more than 1-million sales. As she sang, the roughly 80 patrons at the second show could see the water bottle that keyboard player Chris Burns was sipping between songs, along with orange extension cords and masking tape used to mark equipment locations on stage.
"It has nothing to do with the size. It has to do with the vibe," Muldaur, 60, said after the show. "You can be in a huge arena or in this tiny little jazz club. It makes no difference to me. I've played for as many as 100,000 people at a time. I've enjoyed it, but I like to play at blues festivals where there's, like, 4,000 or 5,000 people. But I enjoyed playing this theater."
