ASU Gammage marks 60 years of dazzling audiences

ASU Gammage, one of the most iconic venues in Arizona, is marking its 60th anniversary.

The “pink birthday cake” building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, debuted on Sept. 18, 1964, with a concert by The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Besides hundreds of arts performances over its six decades, ASU Gammage has hosted many other events, including political debates, funerals, rehearsals and convocations.

As befitting a university, ASU Gammage has witnessed great thinkers, including Stephen Hawking, Andy Warhol and Sonia Sotomayor.

Also, scenes from the 1976 movie “A Star is Born” were shot there.

The venue hosts blockbuster Broadway shows, but it is also a workplace, with classrooms, offices, music libraries and rehearsal spaces.

This fall, ASU Gammage will be the site of students’ tuba classes, performances by two hip-hop dance troupes, concerts by ASU student musical groups, a “theater experience day” for high schoolers and three Broadway shows.

The building was one draw when Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, executive director of ASU Gammage and vice president for cultural affairs at ASU, was being wooed by the university.

“There was such intrigue to be able to come and see the ‘pink birthday cake,’” said Jennings-Roggensack, who went on to make major upgrades to the facility.

“That was 1992, and here we are in 2024, and we're one of the most widely respected cultural institutions in the world.”

In 1957, ASU President Grady Gammage asked his friend Frank Lloyd Wright to design a performing arts building on campus. Wright was able to repurpose a design he had already created — an opera house for Iraq's King Faisal II, unbuilt because the king was assassinated.

Neither Gammage nor Wright lived to see opening night of the $2.5 million Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, later renamed ASU Gammage. Later that year, the facility had its first Broadway production, “Camelot.”

The 1970s and ’80s saw performances by some of the biggest names of the era — Bruce Springsteen, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, James Taylor, B.B. King, Billy Joel, Neil Diamond and Itzhak Perlman, as well as the Broadway blockbuster “Cats.”

But by 1992, when ASU President Lattie Coor brought Jennings-Roggensack to Tempe, she faced big challenges. Her predecessor left a $2 million debt, and the facility was badly outdated.

“When you inherit something that was in that state, there’s nowhere to go but up,” she said.

Coor told her he would support anything she wanted to do. So she started upgrades, including removing the heavy lobby drapes that needed to be replaced every year and making the building more accessible.

“People said, ‘You can’t do that, Mr. Wright wouldn’t have wanted it.’ I said, ‘Mr. Wright is dead, number one. Number two, Mr. Wright believed that a building he built should fall down after 50 years.’

“Well, I knew if this building fell down, no one was going to rebuild it.”

She was mortified that the great violinist Itzhak Perlman, who has mobility issues, would have had to access Gammage via the loading dock because the stage door and the dressing rooms had stairs. So she added an elevator to the stage.

Jennings-Roggensack knew that to be a first-rate venue, Gammage had to bring “Phantom of the Opera.” But the stage could not accommodate it because its 80-ton sound shell took up 18 feet of space. So she worked with designers from Wright’s Taliesin West and engineers from NASA to move the shell off stage.

“And so we were able to preserve the sound and yet be able to get shows like ‘Phantom’ and ‘Wicked’ that financially helped Gammage to stay alive.”

Even with the upgrades, ASU Gammage still had a major design flaw — the bathrooms.

“Mr. Wright designed a building where there were 21 stalls for women. The building holds 3,017 seats with 21 stalls for women, and for men — 42," Jennings-Roggensack said.

“What is wrong with this picture?"

The result was long lines and unhappy theatergoers.

Ten years ago, the venue ran a fundraising campaign called “Elevate and Alleviate.” In 2017, a $9 million renovation added two elevators and 88 bathroom stalls for women.

“President Crow will sometimes tease me saying, ‘On your tombstone it’ll say, ‘She brought bathrooms to Gammage,’” she said.

The building has many other quirks.

“Mr. Wright did not believe in square corners. As a result, our loading dock is round,” Jennings-Roggensack said. “You can't pull a semi and unload it directly into the loading dock area.”

So all the equipment for a show must be taken off the trucks, put onto a forklift, taken to the loading dock, lifted up and moved inside.

Re-upholstering the 3,000-plus seats is continuous — once the last seat is done, they start over, she said.

But because Wright designed the seating on a curve, each seat is unique, which the staff discovered when they removed 268 seats to accommodate “The Lion King.”

“They're just a little bit curved, like a minuscule difference,” Jennings-Roggensack said.

“So now we know that when we take the seats out, they have to be individually boxed with all of the tools.”

Theatergoers can see the new elevators, bathrooms and seats in the Frank Lloyd Wright color palette.

But also upgraded are the guts of Gammage — a complex web of wires, ropes and pulleys, plus the sound and lighting.

“There’s a lot more video elements that come in. We use lasers. We use projectors,” said Shaun Schultz, the production manager for ASU Gammage.

Shows like “Phantom of the Opera,” “Hamilton” and “Wicked” have elaborate sets that require precision.

“A lot of what we do out there is extremely dangerous,” Schultz said. “If we’re doing ‘Wicked’ and Glinda comes floating in her bubble, there's a lot that goes into that to keep her not only on the bubble but to keep that bubble from crashing to the stage.”

One of his favorite anecdotes about ASU Gammage is not from a transcendent theater performance — although there were plenty of those — but from chicken wings.

In 2022, Food Network personality Alton Brown performed. After realizing that Brown’s contract called for an unusual amount of extension cords and plugs, Schultz called Brown’s production manager.

“And he goes, ‘Oh, we're cooking chicken wings. It’s a little unconventional, but you'll understand when you see it.’”

Before the show, a gigantic air fryer was wheeled onto the stage.

“And he's got this thing loaded with chicken wings and fires it up. And there is just so much chicken smoke going everywhere. And he's laughing, throwing spices on everything.”

Trays of wings were passed out to the stagehands.

“I kid you not — probably one of the best chicken wings I have ever had in my life,” Schultz said.

“And for the next two weeks after that show, it smelled like chicken wings in here. It was really good. I liked it.”

ASU Gammage is more than an iconic building. During her tenure, Jennings-Roggensack launched the mission of Connecting Communities — programs to bring arts experiences to children, military families, people who are incarcerated, students in low-income communities and others who might not otherwise get the chance. 

All of that outreach and all of those upgrades build one of the most valuable parts of ASU Gammage — the audience.

“We're one of the only theaters that I've ever seen people tailgate before a show,” Schultz said.

“They come to us and we’re part of their night several times a year.”

After ASU Gammage was closed for 18 months during the COVID-19 pandemic, it reopened in September 2021 with the show “Hamilton.” Schultz was standing at center stage when Jennings-Roggensack said to him, “Are you ready to connect communities?”

He replied, “Yes, ma'am” and radioed to the front of house to open the doors.

The excited crowd streamed in.

“And that noise! Man, I missed that noise. That's my favorite part of the whole thing.”