Memories, history of Royce Hall remind us of our purpose

Published: Monday, September 28, 1998

Monday, September 28, 1998

COLUMN: Through three generations, trademark UCLA symbol houses more than mere performances

To commemorate her 10th birthday, my mother saw a movie. Through sculpted arches in muted red hues, she and 10 of her frilly, party-dressed friends scurried past heavy doors, past ushers, and into the darkened hall. Carol Jean, Lorna, Nancy, Pamela, and other young nymphs of the '50s were going to watch fairy tale cartoons in Royce Hall.

My book-loving librarian of a grandma had encountered the special children's program on a bulletin board at the L.A. County Library where she worked. Always up for a little intellectual enlightenment for her progeny, she decided that a fairy tale theater birthday at UCLA would beat out Pin the Tail on the Donkey, any day. And so, the prepubescent caravan of girls made its merry way to campus in a '54 Chevy Bel-Air.

"I remember it was already dark in the theater," says the woman who, for my purposes, will be known only as my mother. "Probably because we were late, as usual. Probably because Uncle Bill bumped into our car on the way there."

OK, so maybe her memories don't consist of the delicate, muted red and green mosaics of the ceilings, or the squirrely, pseudo-Saxon inscription on the building's Romanesque facade. So what if my mother, remembers only the cartoons that graced the stage when she was a precocious 10-year-old, not the structure that at different times housed Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein or Frank Sinatra, a trio that probably shared no other playhouse. So maybe all my mother remembers is that it was dark, and as my grandma, in mother hen mode, nudged the tidy little girls into the reserved row, she swept an unassuming student usher along with them.

"Pretty soon, mother heard a little voice saying, 'No no no no! I'm the usher!'" my birth-giver says, attributing a cute, shrill tone to the usher's response to grandma's enthusiasm.

She pauses to purse her lips, and inserts a curt disclaimer about the usher, in loyal defense of her mother. "She wasn't very tall, anyway."

When my grandmother's green, squinting eyes adjusted to the light, she realized that all the parents and children in the expansive theater could easily see her heave a poor, short usher into the row, like a mother cat dragging a kitten by the scruff. Thus, as most semi-embarrassing moments do, the Royce story entered my family's folklore, punctuating a quiet moment at grandma's house which peppered a family reunion.

Forty-two years later, when I stepped on campus as a UCLA freshman, all I could see of Royce Hall were construction tarps and the plethora of promotional pictures slapped on every piece of UCLA propaganda. There would be no usher story for me, unless an other-worldly force lifted the menacing dust. From my brief neophytic experience with Dykstra Hall and the De Neve Plaza project, the other-wordly forces of building rehabilitation took their sweet time. I figured when I graduated in four, five years, the adorned doors would still remain closed.

Much to my surprise, they opened last spring. Checkered floors, like the entryway in my childhood doll house, gleamed, and the chandeliers outside the hall glowed like home fires. But I wasn't ready to accept Royce as the be all, end all UCLA landmark. Just because its silhouette graces UCLA stationary doesn't mean a free-thinking student should automatically make Royce his or her primary campus vision.

But this year, Royce has seemingly become a different kind of symbol to more people than ever before. The Proposition 209 protests that led to the stoic building's takeover gave Royce a role beyond a performance venue or a lecture hall.

To some, though, Royce Hall will always be the place where the Tommy Dorsey Band played. To others, it will be the place a famous designer spoke for a record six hours. And to a select few, it will be a place that unites generations with shaky cells of animated fairy tales and starched birthday party dresses. Yet the building will also be a symbol of another age, a sign representing academic establishments that, while hospitable to the arts, have appeared to some to be closed to ethnic difference.

Last spring, I went to my first Royce performance. Before the premiere Israeli guitarist took the stage, I stood in awe as hundreds in the audience sang the Israeli national anthem, the dimmed stage lights airbrushing their faces. The Jewish men and women, and even children, were united by their history in a place with so much history of its own.

After the concert, the audience took to the quad for an Israeli dance party, bathed in light from the Royce chandeliers and shadowed by the College Library. As the dancers dipped and weaved in circles to recorded Hebrew music, I realized that, like the people who danced and smiled in the courtyard, my own conception of Royce Hall, shadowed by the building's historical glory, would be molded by my own experience.

Royce is more than a portrait on a flyer or fodder for mug art at the UCLA store. It is not the twin peak facade or the enveloping balconies that makes the experience, but what should be very obvious: the little memories one finds along the way. Without trying to sound dramatic or preachy, that's what college is all about.

At a performance in the upcoming Royce season, see what stands out to you. Maybe you'll remember the gray inscription above the stage. Maybe you'll remember the way the seats squeak or the way your heels click on the shiny wood floor. Maybe all you'll remember is that it was dark - which, in its own peculiar way, is a memory in itself.

Dickerson is the 1998-1999 on-campus editor.Megan Dickerson

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