With a $10 million donation from investor William “Ted” Little ’49 and his wife, Fran, the Paul Mellon Arts Center Main Stage Theater will, for the first time since 1972, undergo major renovations. The money will be given over four or five years, with the first payment arriving this January.
Headmaster Dr. Alex Curtis said that Mr. and Mrs. Little’s gift will allow the school to bring the PMAC into the twenty-first century. “I’m thrilled because the Arts Center is a very important piece of architecture,” Dr. Curtis said. “The I.M. Pei building was a breakthrough at the time. Once again, that building will come to the forefront of arts and in boarding schools around America.”
According to Ms. Kalya Yannatos, Director of the Arts, the new theater inside the PMAC, which will be renamed the Little Theater, will include more sustainable lighting, wide, clear-cut aisles, and fewer seats. The current 770-seat theater will be downsized to hold between 500 and 550 seats. Mr. and Mrs. Little’s gift will also cover renovations for the Chase-Bear Experimental Theater and backstage areas such as the green room, scene shop, and dressing rooms.
Construction on the Little Theater will begin after Choate’s new auditorium is completed. As Dr. Curtis announced last spring, the auditorium, to be built into the hillside behind the current PMAC Gallery and slated to open in 2018, will include 1070 seats and serve as a venue for all-school meetings, special program events, and musical concerts. It will be able to hold the school’s entire student body, something the PMAC theater cannot do. The Little Theater will be a more intimate setting for theatrical productions and dramatic arts. Mr. Little’s donation will not contribute to the construction of the auditorium.
Mr. Little, who goes by Ted, was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. After graduating from Choate, he served in the U.S. Air Force in 1949 before earning his B.A. and M.B.A. at the University of Michigan. He and his wife have placed little restriction on the funds. “Our attitude is: The School knows what the students need and how it should be and how it should be done.” Mr. Little said. “I only hope that the new theater will be more accessible for those who are hearing or sight-impaired. I’m hard of hearing, so my wife and I suggested that it would be nice to provide those benefits.”
Mr. Little’s donation, according to Mr. Dan Courcey, Executive Director of Development and Alumni Relations, may have been influenced by his grandson Kohl Weisman’s ’15 involvement in Choate’s arts program. (Last spring, Weisman was awarded the Francis Lemoyne Page Prize for Outstanding Contribution in the Creative Arts.) “While Ted and Fran never told us directly, I suspect witnessing all the extraordinary things their grandson experienced here had a direct impact on their decision to come forward with this gift,” said Mr. Courcey.
Mr. Little explained that he was also spurred on by his failing health. Three years ago he went blind and, soon after, developed a terminal kidney disease. “During all of that,” Mr. Little said, “it became clear to me that because of my limited time, I needed to do something significant for the school. My wife and I were talking one night, and we decided that we wanted to be a part of the theater.”
Since construction on the Little Theater will not begin immediately, the Arts Department plans to use the next few months to examine its programs and courses. Mr. Little’s donation arrives amid a school-wide curriculum review, and the Arts Department will be able to design and tailor the Little Theater to both accommodate the needs of students and fit a new vision of the Choate Arts Program.
Ms. Yannatos said, “The construction of the Little Theater grants us the opportunity to imagine and dream in new ways about how our programs might express themselves and how they serve the students. I hope there will be a lot of informing back and forth. Programs informing space, space helping to inform and inspire programs, and doing things that we maybe haven’t been able to do before because the space was not accessible or appropriate.”
Throughout his years, Mr. Little has shown great commitment to Choate. In 2009, he funded the Heads of Schools Bust Project, located outside of the Sally Hart Lodge. Mr. Little later supported the construction of Phoebe House, the new Headmaster’s house that was completed in 2013. In 2014, Mr. Little was given the Distinguished Service Award. That same year, Mr. and Mrs. Little joined a handful of supporters of Choate’s Beyond the Classroom initiative by establishing the Ted Little ’49 Family Beyond the Classroom Fund, which lends financial support to students who could not otherwise afford to participate in certain extracurricular activities.
Mr. Little said, “I developed a lot of pride in being at Choate, and I developed a very strong feeling about the School, about being in a special place. I made friends that I’m still close to.” To this day, Mr. Little attributes his success as an investor and entrepreneur to his Choate education.
He went on, “Choate basically saved my life. As a young man, the only ambition I had was to play professional basketball, but Choate put me on a path to accomplish something with my life. I certainly felt a strong obligation to somehow repay the school for what it did for me.”
