Multi-purpose Theater At Mark's Coffee House: New World Moves Off Campus

Multi-purpose Theater At Mark's Coffee House
New World Moves Off Campus

As University hassles continue over usage of facilities by student groups, one student organization, New World Media Project, has acquired a non-University owned facility for a new multi-purpose theater which promises to be quite exciting. Located at the site of the old Mark 's Coffee House on Williams at Maynard, the new project will eventually include a coffeehouse, a community theater, cinema, and an art gallery -- all non-profit.

Scheduled to open first, in July, is the Matrix theater; a community exhibition center for the performing, cinema and visual arts, as well as for children's matinees. Later in the year will come the Cafe of the Americas, a low cost coffeehouse specializing in Latin American food and drink. Also scheduled is an Art Gallery with changing wall displays for guest exhibitors.

As explained by New World Media Project, the purpose of the new center is "to provide films for viewing, on a financially viable basis, to the greater University of Michigan campus community, to increase community awareness of the visual arts, especially film, performing, sculpture and painting and to help enhance student community awareness of human needs in the city and the desirability and advantages of non-profit human service institutions and the role of these institutions in helping to effect positive social change.

"Films are chosen on the basis of their educational, social and artistic value, and their ability to provide people with a progressive insight into social institutions and the status quo as is provided by some of the world's foremost directors, commercial exploitation films do not fit this criteria and will not be supported by the cooperative."

To find out more about this new nonprofit enterprise, the SUN recently interviewed Keith (Dallas) Kenny, General Manager of New World Media Project. In the portions of the taped conversation which follow, Kenny talks about the new theater, and also discusses some of the problems which New World has had with the University.

SUN: Well, what can you teil us about the new project?

KENNY: It's going to be a non-profit community theater. A matrix theater. There's going to be 200 seats on the first floor; that's all we can handle right now. But by winter we should be able to construct the downstairs. We're going to make a Latin America coffeehouse out of that. Probably put a stage on the first floor. There's going to be a lot of things going on.

SUN: Will you be showing commercial films?

KENNY: Well, we'll probably start out with the greatest hits so we can get financially on the way, probably for the first 2 to 3 weeks and then we're going to go in and do a lot more international films. We're trying to have some good children's matinees, two or three a day. That'll probably be around Christmas time, because it’s going to cost us, at this point, about $21,000 for construction of the entire theater, to bring it up to all the city codes... it's pretty stiff code regulations that we have to meet.

SUN: How about a brief history of the New World?

KENNY: New World has been together now for about two years. We started out as a small media collective. We were working out of the People's Ballroom at the time and were putting a little energy into helping building the ballroom when it first opened. Consequently, we showed for about two months (before it burned down) a combination of entertainment and third world, revolutionary films. We got a lot of films from Newsreel; they were very helpful in helping us get started. They were giving us films for free that we could show. And the Rainbow People's Party let us use their media equipment and advertising facilities. We could do a good job that way. It was pretty successful. Later on, more and more students started getting involved, and people suggested that since we became predominantly student, that we become a student organization. So we started renting, after the ballroom broke down... we started relying more heavily on University facilities for the film series. It became more and more popular in the University and within the general community. And eventually we broke down into two film series, one for entertainment, a popular film series, and a popular third world revolutionary film series. We started to show the international film series for free, and we had a deal going where we would show the films with a whole lot of mass appeal to help subsidize the free film series. And we encouraged more and more people to see some of the more meaningful films coming out of third world, and from around the world. It worked pretty good.

We were showing in the UGLI multipurpose room, and we were getting about 200 to 400 people per showing. We also had a Cuban Film Festival that was really successful. We had about 600 people come to that. And we were bringing in speakers from different countries, or at least they were really authorities on the subject matter, to speak on particular films. Tech Hi-Fi was supplying us with a really good sound system, and we were bringing in a lot of live ethnic music. Eventually the University closed down the UGLI multipurpose room, around last Christmas, and this drove the free film series off the scene.

SUN: Is this what prompted a non-university facility for the new program?

KENNY: There's been a move in the last year by the University to appropriate campus film groups. They've threatened that either student film groups hand over their money into University-run bank accounts or the University will drive them to bankruptcy, through denying them the use of their facilities. Faced with this, we decided to choose a place off campus that would be more stable. Another consideration is that the University charges over 20 grand a year to most film groups to show films... So we got a good deal on this facility, through Campus Management. We got it for about $600 a month. We're much better able to serve the students and the people who want to use it. We'll also be able to rent it out as an alternative auditorium to the University's auditoriums at a much cheaper rate.

SUN: Do you feel, as part of New World, that the University can be stopped in its efforts to implement financial control?

KENNY: There are three central things that have to be done to counter this tactic by the University. 1) Try to unify with other student groups (and there are about 600 of them) as much as possible, so we can bring pressure to bear as a group, to prevent them from pushing us around. That goes back a few months ago to when the University applied a freeze on auditoriums, and they applied the pressure to film groups only. Later on, I think that they became aware that this was highly illegal, that it was unequal application of the law, and discrimination. So what they did was to expand this ruling to encompass all student organizations, so it couldn't be said that they were singling somebody out.

That puts us somewhat of a disadvantage, legally, 'cause it's no longer a discrimination process going on at the current time, so we have to prove past damages. But the flip side of the coin is that what it has done is to throw some student groups in together and pissed off a whole lot more people, so that instead of just a few groups being threatened, all groups are threatened, and there's a whole lot more potential for unity in the whole great spectrum of student groups.

Now, another essential thing that we have to do to exist is to resist the university legally. And what we've done there is we've approached the American Civil Liberties Union, and we've made a presentation before the county board of the ACLU, and they've agreed to look into our case and they also agreed to take it continued on page 8