Western Illinois University will unveil the inaugural season for the Goldfarb Center for Performing Arts during a speakeasy-themed gala Saturday night, offering the first look at programming planned for the new venue.
The Performing Arts Society’s annual gala begins at 5:30 p.m. in the University Union Grand Ballroom.
The event will include a dinner and entertainment — and a major announcement regarding the Great Hall in the Goldfarb CPA.
“The attendees will also be among the first to know what’s happening at the Goldfarb Center in the coming year because we plan to unveil our inaugural season, which I have promised is a season of joy, at the gala,” said Anne Lefter, Director of the Goldfarb CPA.
She said tickets are still available for the gala through the Western Presents website.
Construction of the Goldfarb CPA continues on the WIU campus in Macomb. It will open this fall. When it does, its studio theater will be named the Clow Theater in honor of the late Billy Clow.
“It’s really special. When I walk through there, I think about Billy and I think about how excited he was to have that space in the Goldfarb,” said Tammy Killian, Clow’s widow and associate dean for the College of Fine Arts and Communication.
Clow was the COFAC dean and a driving force behind construction of the CPA.
He passed away about a year ago.
Al and Elaine Goldfarb gave a $25,000 matching gift on WIU’s Day of Giving last week to help raise the money to have the studio theater named after Clow. One of the donors was Riverside Construction, which is building the CPA.
Killian said WIU’s Department of Theater and Dance will perform many of its productions in the Clow Theater, which will open in October with a performance of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “Twelfth Night.”
It will be directed by Bill Kincaid, a retired professor of theatre at WIU and author of Performing Shakespeare Unrehearsed.
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