Star power rolls into Mohawk Theater to assess restoration

NORTH ADAMS — Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons and Lauren Hutton, aka Guggenheim Motorcycle Club, made a pit stop at the Mohawk Theater on Tuesday afternoon.

Thomas Krens, left, Lauren Hutton, Laurence Fishburne,
Catherine Nouvel and Jeremy Irons with Mayor Alcombright at the Mohawk.

But the beloved performers weren't acting — the Mohawk Theater hasn't been in use since 1991 — but rather were giving input on what improvements the space may need so the theater's curtain may rise gain.

The actors joined Thomas Krens, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art visionary and former director of the Guggenheim Foundation, on a motorcycle tour through the Northern Berkshires, including stops at Mass MoCA and the Clark Art Institute.  

Fishburne and the Guggenheim Motorcycle Club were in the city to set out on a ride through the Adirondacks in memory of their late member Dennis Hopper. But club co-founder Thomas Krens hooked them into a tour of the long-closed theater in search of inspiration and ideas.

Krens also took the group to the planned future site of The Global Contemporary Collection and Museum, which he proposed earlier this year and is trying to raise capital to build, on Route 2 in North Adams.

Fishburne, perhaps best known for his role in as Morpheus in the "Matrix" series, stood with Mayor Richard Alcombright and others on the theater's balcony and soaked in the space, providing a performer's perspective on needs for an expanded stage and administrative spaces. While walking through the theater's dark stairways, Irons questioned the mayor about potential funding sources for redevelopment.

Mayor Richard Alcombright and Building Inspector William Meranti offered background on the efforts to bring the building back and how it had looked in the past. The city acquired the back part of the building in 1996 and the front in 2002. "We would just love to have ideas," the mayor told the club.

A number of repairs have been made over the past two decades, including fixing the roof, stabilizing the structure, replacing the entrance corridor, adding on a former commercial space next to it for a future box office and rehabbing the marquee.

Harold Perrineau, who played Michael Dawson on the popular ABC series "Lost," also toured the facility.

"It's to show and to tell and to let people see what could be," said John DeRosa, who serves as the city's solicitor and heads the local nonprofit North Adams Partnership, on bringing people through the theater.

Alcombright also was impressed by the input Krens' guests gave on the theater.

"These people had some vast ideas about what this place could be," Alcombright said.

"You have to go this way," he said, pointing to the back wall, "or this way," turning to point at the front entrance.

Accessibility and the support space, Fishburne said, would be needed for a multipurpose theater

The Mohawk Theater held more than 1,000 seats in its prime, but closed more than two decades ago. Now owned by the city and opened in 1938, the theater has seen some repairs — including to the roof — since its closure, but its walls are bare and the seats are in storage. To bring it to a basic working condition would take an estimated $2.5 million to $3 million, according to city officials.

An initial renovation project was completed in 2009, including the gutting of the 1,100-seat theater and repairs to the roof and facade. 

Alcombright has sought to foster a partnership the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to complete the work and reopen the theater, but those efforts have yet to bear fruit.

With preliminary mayoral elections less than three weeks away, the vacant Mohawk Theater has become a campaign issue, with Alcombright's opponents, John Barrett III, and Eric Rudd, expressing a desire to bring the theater back to life.