When the Lindemann Performing Arts Center held its grand opening in October 2023, the completion of the performance building was met with eager anticipation by students on campus awaiting a new, dynamic performing space.
But over a year later, many students involved in the arts still find themselves on the outside looking in. Some groups said they have yet to rehearse or perform in the much-promoted Lindemann. It’s a shortcoming that staff who oversee the Lindemann have acknowledged and vowed to rectify over the next year.
“We haven’t once had the opportunity to play in the Lindemann, which is sort of absurd,” said Will Hardy ’25, the teaching assistant for the Brown Jazz Band. “It’s crazy to me that we have such an expensive, world-class facility with the Lindemann and that I may graduate having just never played there.”
The Jazz Band, along with Musical Forum and the Wind Symphony, are just some of the performance groups on campus whose members said they have never had the opportunity to rehearse or perform in the Lindemann. These objections are part of a larger set of criticisms from Brown’s arts groups over the lack of proper on-campus performance spaces, which critics say often lack the adequate stage and audience capacity, along with proper acoustic features.
The students’ complaints are primarily directed toward the University organization responsible for managing the Lindemann: the Brown Arts Institute.
Several students who spoke to The Herald criticized BAI for a lack of transparency about how and when the Lindemann and other BAI-managed spaces are used. Some even expressed doubt that the rehearsal rooms are already booked at each time the groups attempt to reserve them.
BAI representatives told The Herald that the building hosted 18 student group rehearsals per week throughout the fall semester.
Others accused BAI of prioritizing their own interests by holding private events unbeknownst to students.
“BAI seems to be having private events (in the Lindemann) all of the time,” said Bryce Gray ’25, a member of the Musical Forum Board, Ensemble Theatre, Shades of Brown, Brown Band and the Wind Symphony. “It’s rarely ever anything that’s for students specifically or student-run events.”
According to Cristina Barbella ’26, a Jazz Band and Wind Symphony performer, the spaces that her groups can book are not adequately equipped for their performances.
“You would have to jump off the stage and walk in front of the first row of people to get to the solo mic, which is just so unfair to us as performers,” she said. “We’re trying to be professional, but then you give us this space that’s just not meant for us to be there with 20 people on the stage.”
Student performers in the Jazz Band said that access to the Lindemann, which contains a Main Hall that can support a 100-person orchestra and house 530 audience members, could address concerns about limited seating and audience capacity.
Currently, their performers play in Martinos Auditorium or Grant Recital Hall, the latter of which can seat 133 people. But Jazz Band performer Patrick Rourke ’25 says the space is too small to meet the demand for their performances and the Lindemann would offer greater access.
But, according to Rourke, the group hasn’t been informed of why its requests to perform in the Lindemann have been denied. “It’s really disappointing as a student who is so involved in music that I don’t have the chance to perform in a space and I don’t really know why,” Rourke said.
“I thought the Lindemann was going to be a chance for musical groups on campus to have a chance to perform on a bigger stage and get more attention, but it doesn’t seem like that’s happening,” he added.
Thomas Seeger ’27, the BAI liaison for the theater group Musical Forum, acknowledged that while BAI is generally responsive to their group’s concerns, he feels that the University has misjudged their priorities by inviting external performers to use their spaces while leaving the Lindemann inaccessible to its students.
“As I recall from people I’ve talked to around the Music Department, the Lindemann was originally conceived as a space for students to perform and produce various artistic forms,” Seeger said. “In the design and construction process, that sort of got lost.”
The Musical Forum currently performs their musicals at Granoff’s Fishman Studio, a performance venue that Co-Chair Yaffa Segal ’25 said has limited audience capacity in comparison to the demand of their shows. While Segal and Seeger said Lindemann is not a perfect theater space, venues like Lindemann or Stuart Theatre, which is run by the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, would be a big step up from their current venue.
Representatives of BAI acknowledged the student groups’ frustrations and wrote in an email to The Herald that they were committed to increasing transparency and student access to the Lindemann.
“This past year, the BAI focused on bringing internationally acclaimed artists to campus through the IGNITE Series to work alongside our faculty and students in the Lindemann’s Main Hall,” said Sydney Skybetter, BAI’s faculty director and an associate professor of theatre arts and performance studies. “During this next year, the majority of our programming will be campus-based projects and student-led performances.”
“Increasing the accessibility and transparency of BAI spaces is a top priority, and I’m super excited to share more in the months to come,” he added.
