It’s been two-decade a rollercoaster ride, but the Mosesian Center for the Arts made it to 20 years in large part to its current interim executive director.
Hundreds filled the arts center on May 22 for the 20th Anniversary Celebration, enjoying theater, music, comedy, food, and each other’s company.
The idea for an arts center began when the City of Watertown was reimagining what could be done at the former U.S. Army Arsenal. In 2001, the City signed a 99-year-lease for the front part of Building 312, and the Arsenal Center for the Arts opened in 2005. In 2016 it became the Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts.
Doug Orifice, who co-hosted the event with Kristina Smarz of Mosesian Arts Improve, said that he has seen how important the arts are around town.
“Watertown is just such an amazing place when it comes to arts and culture. I feel like I’m meeting this but not just when I’m here, a new artist almost every day here in Watertown,” said Orifice, who is co-President of the Watertown Business Coalition. “So yes, we’re celebrating 20 years at the Mosesian Center of the Arts, but we’re also celebrating arts and culture in Watertown, period — its past, its present and its future.”
A long time tenant has been the Watertown Children’s Theatre, which produced nine shows this year with more than 300 actors ages 5 to 19.
Two former members of the WCT were back at the Mosesian Center for the Art earlier this year as part of the cast of Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Alan Kuang played Puck, and Mia Giatrelis was Fairy and a dance captain. Giatrelis participated in an intensive summer program with the Children’s Theatre, and recalled being part of productions of “Chicago” and “The Laramie Project.” Kuang first came to the WCT in eighth grade, and he took two classes: Shakespeare and stage combat. He also showed off some of his breakdancing skills, which he utilized during “Midsummer.”
The audience was treated to performances by the Watertown Children’s Theatre, who performed a scene from “Hadestown;” an improv performance by a group including Smarz and incorporated a couple members of the audience; and a few songs from Hayley Reardon, a singer songwriter who recently performed with Ed Sheeran.
Reaching the 20th Anniversary was no simple feat, said MCA Board President Shauna Harrington. She credited Roberta Miller, who returned for her second stint as Executive Director. She first led the MCA from 2015-20, but then the Pandemic hit and the MCA suffered like many arts organizations around the country. In 2024 Miller stepped up again.
“Last year, MCA reached a financial crisis, the board began discussions about whether we were going to have to close the doors and turn off the lights on this big idea of a beloved arts community,” Harrington said. “I was not being hyperbolic when I said earlier that we would not be here tonight celebrating our 20th anniversary if it weren’t for Roberta.”
Miller offered to serve pro bono as the Interim Executive Director and the MCA received “generous financial support from a handful of Angel donors,” Harrington said, which allowed the Center to remain open. Miller immediately began to apply her expertise as a grassroots organizer, Harrington said, and got the MCA back on stable ground.
“Roberta has the rare gift of being both a big ideas person and a get things done person. She’s not afraid to dream, to imagine, to see things that do not yet exist, and she’s also not afraid to roll up her sleeves and tell the rest of us to roll up our sleeves to get things done,” Harrington said. “She again asked people to invest in MCA, to donate their time, their expertise, their money. She invited people into the space. Made people feel welcome, made people feel that this is their Art Center.
“She made people know that they belong here, and she reminded us that having a Community Arts Center means that all of us are responsible for keeping it open.”
Miller provided her own perspective of the MCA, a place that she said she’s grown to love and which she believes is critical to the community.
“First, the Mosesian Center has been the artistic anchor for the development of the Arsenal Corridor. If you look back on Arsenal street 20 years ago, you would not recognize the barren, underutilized space,” Miller said. “The arts are early stimulus for revitalization now, after much work by so many people, the corridor is a lively, engaging area with more residents, apartments and a renovated park, a movie theater, two new hotels, a restaurant, as well as active retail.”
While people may think of the MCA as the theater, the classrooms where art classes are taught, Miller said she sees it as more than that.
“At its best, it is the heart of community arts, where painters contemplate the blank canvas and show their work to all at Creative Chats, where artists gather for serious conversations about the nature of art and how to integrate that wonderful spark of aliveness into their busy lives at open mic evenings,” she said. “Where all are invited to share their unique, their serious or their very crazy offerings. And finally, the theater productions for children or adults that start with a script but evolve into a coherent, living, breathing production where everyone comes out a bit different from the experience.”
She warned that the Mosesian Center should not be taken for granted.
“Like democracy, this institution is alive, and like all living things, it will continue to need your support, your love and your work to survive. We have had and will again have economic slowdowns, bursting financial bubbles, generational handoffs, and tired donors and board members,” Miller said. “If we understand that, we will continue to have these challenges, and those among us or new friends continue to step forward and say, ‘I will help out. What can I do?’ Then we will be fine, and not just fine. We will thrive and continue to be the amazing place for us to experience being alive together.”
The Mosesian Center has a wide variety of events coming up, including the final performances of the Watertown Children’s Theatre season, Actors’ Shakespeare Project has two plays coming next season, a jazz series, the Earfull series which teams musicians and writers, the Boston International Kids Film Festival, and in December the MCA will host comedian Paula Poundstone. See more about the MCA by clicking here.
A fund has been set up as part of the Mosesian Center for the Arts’ 20th Anniversary Celebration. Click here for more details.