Hilarious article by Will Jones in today’s RTD covering the feud between the Centerstage Foundation and the journalist it hired to write the project’s definitive history. It seems seeing the truth in the printed word was too much for Foundation officials.
The CenterStage Foundation killed plans to publish “Richmond CenterStage: A Dream Fulfilled” after author Roy Proctor refused to do additional research and to rewrite his draft to downplay controversies over the $73.5 million project.
“I could not possibly have adhered to those things because I would have been falsifying history on a monumental scale,” said Proctor, who retired in 2004 as an arts writer and critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The Foundation’s if you can’t make it happen, make it up attitude is summed up by board member Sue Fitz-Hugh who helpfully admits, “We didn’t hire him as a journalist…We hired him as an author.” Perhaps Nick Naylor is available.
You should read the final comments by Proctor twice, because they cut to the heart of this project’s history. How going about things the wrong way can poison what may have started out as a noble effort. Critics of CenterStage are not against the arts or kids or old people or sunshine, but rather how the Foundation’s leadership have comported themselves and wasted public money.
“If you had told me last summer that I had to write a book according to those rules, I would have rejected the commission out of hand,” Proctor responded in an e-mail to Erin Rodman, marketing manager for the CenterStage Foundation. Proctor provided copies of his book draft and e-mail exchanges with the foundation to The Times-Dispatch upon request.
Proctor said he supports CenterStage, and his introduction to the book said it’s a story about “renewed life.”
Other items soon to induce coffee spillage on at least one of the 400 RTDs delivered each morning to 110 Virginia Street (somebody has to keep Media General in business, ya know)…Q2 financial information on First Market Bank and Ukrops Supermarkets from the FDIC.
Photo credit: Fox Searchlight Films
Posted by EE