Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed projects around the globe — including his home and studio outside Spring Green, Wisconsin, called Taliesin.
Its 800 acres enfold the famed architect’s home, studio and other buildings, including Hillside Theater.
The theater reopened a few months ago, after a massive $1.1 million restoration project. Crews addressed challenges caused by wear, tear, and water that made its way into the building’s walls.
Taliesin's buildings, in Wisconsin's Driftless region, seem to crop up out of the rolling landscape — an expression of Frank Lloyd Wright’s deep connection to nature.
One of the structures holds the Hillside Theater, built from locally sourced sandstone and oak.
It appears to rise naturally from its sloped surroundings. Yet shoring up and upgrading the theater over the past five years was a gargantuan and expensive task.
“It was a very beautiful theater, but it needed a lot of help, says Collections Coordinator Kyle Dockery.
We spoke this past summer as a crowd of Wright enthusiasts gathered to celebrate what would have been the architect’s 157th birthday.
The highlight was the unveiling of the newly-restored Hillside Theater. Its intimate space holds 100 rounded red seats.
The audience looks down upon a stage that’s punctuated by a large and intricate handmade curtain designed by Wright.
“It’s this abstract composition of felt and yarn, said to be an example of the Taliesin landscape,” Dockery said.
Dockery said the theater is also a special space because Wright connected to it in a way that he did not connect with other designs.
“It’s a good place to experiment because he doesn’t have any clients that he needs to satisfy … so he could test out a lot of ideas here,” Dockery explained.
Taliesin, and the Hillside Theater, have been tested over time. The story starts with Wright’s aunts. They asked him to design a school for them.
“A boarding school, the Hillside Home School. This was in 1887, [Wright] was only 20 years old. He designed a much more traditional building than you would expect from Frank Lloyd Wright,” Dockery said.
When his aunts needed more space, Wright designed “classrooms, a gymnasium and a couple of dedicated art and science rooms. The school closed in 1915 after the horrific first fire at Taliesin in 1914."
Yes, Dockery said first — there were more fires at Taliesin.
The building stood vacant until the early 1930s, when Wright launched a training program called the Taliesin Fellowship.
“One of their first projects was to turn the old gymnasium into a theater. And it became an arthouse cinema of sorts. So, they were showing all of these very unusual and obscure films here throughout the 30s and 40s,” Dockery explained.
That is until April of 1952. “They set a brush fire a little too close to the building, which destroyed the theater and the dining room right next to it.
Work immediately began building a new theater — the Hillside Theater that lives on today.
According to Taliesin Preservation, it “once boasted regular productions performed by Frank Lloyd Wright Fellowship members, in line with Wright’s holistic approach to education.”
Fast-forward across the decades, the theater continued to have issues. Restoration began in 2019 thanks to financial gifts and grants, including from the National Park Service Save America’s Treasures program.
Crews worked from the ground up — updating heating, cooling and ventilation systems, repairing masonry and the roof.
The theater’s stage was reconstructed. Crews installed LED lighting and cameras so performances can now be livestreamed and enjoyed from afar.
“My favorite part is that it feels very much the same. … It’s just been brought up a few notches,” David Skidmore, a member of Grammy-award-winning Third Coast Percussion, shared.
The Chicago-based quartet performed at the theater’s grand reopening, but the percussion group has a long association with Taliesin.
“We first performed at Taliesin in 2009 I believe and came back to celebrate the centenary of this location,” Skidmore said. He even composed a piece for that occasion.
It’s Wright’s creative legacy that means most to the percussionist. “His philosophy, his approach to design, and I’ve always appreciated his ability to make complex beauty out of simple things,” Skidmore shared.
He’s excited for future artists who get to perform in this unique space and the audiences who will share the experience.
