A groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 20 in Tuscaloosa officially jump-started construction of the Smith Family Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Alabama (UA) campus.

Members of the university's community and supporters of the project were present for the event on the renovated Bryce Campus, where the center is being built.

In a news release, UA said the ceremony honored many years of planning and fundraising efforts to create a cutting-edge facility that will meet the performance, design, and production needs of a theater and dance department that has more than doubled its enrollment over the last 20 years.

"The Smith Family Center for the Performing Arts will help set a new standard of excellence for both students and faculty," noted University President Stuart R. Bell. "We're incredibly thankful to the Smith family and everyone's support in making our campus an epicenter for performing arts."

In 2022, Clay Smith, a graduate of the Culverhouse College of Business at UA, along with his wife, Cameron, herself a graduate of the College of Communication and Information Sciences, and his mother, Linda, made a $20 million gift toward the project in memory of Mark Smith — a husband, father, and cofounder of ADTRAN, the Huntsville global telecommunications company.

Clay Smith said the creativity his dad derived from being a musician "defined and balanced" Mark Smith personally and as an engineer and businessman.

"A lot of philanthropic lessons were taught through my father, who cared deeply about medicine, education, and the arts," Clay remarked. "But for all our experiences as a family, the magnet has always been the arts. We're honored to help provide those same joys and opportunities to the university and its future artists and performers."

Project Aims to Ready Students for Performing Arts Careers

Pending final approval from the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees, the Smith Family Center will centralize student performance spaces for dance, theater, and opera through these venues:

• A black box theatre with flexible seating for up to 275.
• A proscenium style theater with seating for 350.
• Specifically designed space for dance, with seating for 450.

These performance spaces will allow UA students to perform in productions with multifaceted scenery, lighting and effects comparable to major regional theaters and those on Broadway.

The new performance spaces will replace UA's Marian Gallaway Theatre, Bryant-Jordan Hall, and The Dance Theatre as primary student venues on campus.

Additionally, the Smith Family Center will feature a variety of upgrades, including:

• Larger stage openings and off-stage spaces.
• Deeper stages for ballet performances.
• Orchestral pits.
• An elevated audience experience.
• Adjustable acoustics.
• Engineered floors.

"Our theater, dance and opera programs are nationally recognized as leaders in the performing arts," explained Joseph P. Messina, dean of the UA College of Arts and Sciences. "As our outstanding faculty continues to attract and prepare some of the nation's most talented students, the new state-of-the-art rehearsal and production spaces will allow them to unleash their fullest potential in facilities equivalent to those in which they will be working as professionals."

The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, part of the UA System, is the state's flagship university.

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