Moving out of Hoyt Sherman’s bedroom

Hoyt Sherman Place chief Robert Warren was full of interesting trivia and color commentary when I stopped by to chat with him and longtime Hoyt Sherman supporter Fred Weitz on Nov. 1. 

Warren is orchestrating a $3.5 million addition to and revamp of the auditorium wing, which stages many concerts and other shows. A bit over $2 million has been raised. The goal is to raise the rest by April, when the yearlong construction would begin. The auditorium proper was rehabbed in 2004.

Part of the latest project will move offices out of the mansion’s old bedroom.

“Currently, the administrative offices are housed in the original bedroom of Hoyt and Sara Sherman, and the sitting room. Seven of the 10 staff are in their bedroom,” Warren said.

So Warren decided the bedrooms in the mansion should be restored. “We had a donor who stepped forward said, ‘I just happen to have $30,000 worth of Victorian 1890s bedroom furniture that I’m willing to donate to whoever wants it.’ Authentic his and her with matching armoires. He also gave us a painting that’s been put on display with a 24-carat gold frame.” The donor: local businessman Don Gulick.

“It’s a Raphael Madonna copy, but when we sent it to Chicago to be restored, the collection person said it was going to cost a bit more because this is a 24-carat gold leaf frame,” Warren said. 

Lovett: Hoyt Sherman rocks

Warren is a busy guy. In his spare time, he talked singer/guitarist Lyle Lovett into recording a tribute to Hoyt Sherman Place. Lovett has been a fixture there lately, visiting seven times since Warren took over in 2015.  

“My favorite part about performing at Hoyt Sherman Place is the room itself,” Lovett said. “The theater is such a perfect size, around 1,200 seats, and you just feel close to everybody in the audience. It’s a beautiful room, and in addition to that, it’s a great sounding room. The proximity to the people just gives you such a warm feeling onstage. Y’all take such good care of us. It’s such a historic place. The people who work here care about the place.” See the full video here.

What about the bats?

Any of us who have attended many shows at the theater in the past couple of decades or more have noticed — as have some performers — that bats sometimes swooped around the ceiling over the stage. You could see them from the seats often. 

Warren said people mistakenly thought the bats were among endangered species. But he brought in the experts, found out they weren’t, and asked what could be done. Basically, blow fans up there in the summer, and keep it kind of warm in the winter, the experts from Central College and elsewhere said. The bats don’t like chilly moving air. They like still, hot air in the summer for breeding and still 40-degree air in the winter. So the auditorium heats it to about 50 up there in the winter. 

No one has seen a bat there in three months, Warren said. 

The bat thing affected performers to varying degree over the years. The most unsettled, in Warren’s view, was comedian Wanda Sykes.

“Wanda Sykes was the most freaked out,” Warren said. “Every time I see her on the talk show she still talks about that one time in Des Moines. Sykes is fond of repeating this line: ‘It must have been a racist bat, because it didn’t come after anybody else, but it came after me.’ ”

Jewel took a different approach. 

“When Jewel was here with her family, she did her holiday show here the Christmas before this last one, and a bat surfaced,” Warren said. “She stopped the show because our technicians have bat nets and they come up with a single hand and swoop and catch the bat, and the show goes on. She did not want them to harm the bat. She sang a song to the bat. She said she grew up in Alaska, and with dirt floors the bats are the best thing for the environment.

“Same thing with [banjo greats] Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck, husband and wife. She was doing, probably 11 months ago, a song that an Appalachian woman had actually taught Loretta Lynn how to sing. So she said she was going to do the song with no guitar, no microphone, see if you like it. She starts to sing this song about the spirit of this woman, and a bat appears and she just starts sobbing.

“‘It’s you!’ she said to her friend. ‘Enjoy the show.’ And she’s singing to this flying bat.

“The worst is when you have a dance competition with 150 girls ages 6 to 8 onstage and a bat would surface, and the piercing sound of all those girls screaming,” Warren added.

Hoyt Sherman managers had thought about filling the cracks that the bats use to enter, and the historic preservation people vetoed it. So, Warren turned to the fans.