Center for the Arts

Behind the Scenes: Boone Enser

Daniel “Boone” Enser believes he could not have chosen a better time to join the staff at Center for the Arts. When he helped create the Video Production group two years ago, UB and its leadership were seeking more visibility on the national and international stage, and there was a growing need to tell the UB story. As Director of Media, Enser and his team develop university marketing videos, television programs, documentaries, and athletics programming, all designed to help UB take its message to a wider audience.

“When I first arrived six years ago, Executive Director Tom Burrows had a vision to fill a need for video production at the University as well as produce television directly out of the Center” Enser explained. “The first project we wanted to do was an informational video about the Center. It wasn’t cost effective to have an outside agency produce it, so the Center invested in video gear and we produced it ourselves. After that project, we developed a television series called “Music Is Art” producing almost 50 episodes and winning multiple Telly awards. The series still runs statewide on Thinkbright-TV. When the Dalai Lama came to campus, thirty thousand people came to hear his speech at the football stadium and we ran the video projection on the big screens. We also videotaped his entire three-day visit – 53 – and produced a documentary on the Tibetan monks who were in residence at the Center during his visit. At that point we brought producer Regina Ticco onboard. Anyone can operate a camera and anyone can jump on a computer. The difference is that our staff brings a professional background and an ability to tell stories.”

For Enser, known since childhood as “Boone,” there is not a pool of experience to draw from but more of a wellspring. After high school, he worked as an intern at WGRZ Channel 2 before moving into a part time position at the station. Boone’s first big break came when his boss had a break of his own - unfortunately his femur. In a pinch, the station called upon the 19- year-old to direct and Boone did his first live newscast. After that he worked at numerous broadcast outlets including the Golf Channel, ESPN, CBS Sports, USA Network, Disney Channel, ABC, ABC Family and Nickelodeon. After living in several warm weather cities, Boone and his wife Jamie decided to come back to Buffalo and raise their two little girls.

In his six years at the Center for the Arts, Boone and his staff have created projects for many departments and groups on campus, and partnered with university leadership in communicating the UB 2020 message. “We produce videos for the President’s annual address and other events that reach out to the community. We produced a highlight film for UB’s champion football team, editing down two hundred hours of footage from our “Bullseye” television series, and it turned out fantastic. Last year, the Center for the Arts started a great new program training artists to work in local hospitals, and our videos have helped with promotion and funding. We also do commercials for UB groups, and completed marketing videos for the pharmacy and engineering schools as well as the College of Arts and Sciences.”

Several projects have also had a national impact. “We recently completed a school safety video for the Secret Service where we staged and recorded an incident of school violence. It’s something that might help saves lives,” Enser explained.

While Boone has found great individual success in the industry as well as at the Center for the Arts, he still embraces the collaborative, creative process. “I’m just one member of a team,” Enser said. “You need people with different talents working together to create success. That’s what I see happening at UB. It’s not often that a university seeks to change the landscape of an entire region. Whether it’s Tom Burrows or President Simpson, leaders with vision are few and far between. Working at the Center gives me a chance to contribute to that vision.”

Behind the Scenes: Katherine Trapanovski

By Jeffrey Levine

“1.5 billion dollars,” Director of Events and Outreach Katherine Trapanovski quoted as the University at Buffalo’s impact on the Western New York economy. “It’s an impressive number.”

While the Center for the Arts may be a long way from comprising the entirety of that ten-figure sum, their more than 400 events each year certainly qualifies them as one of the more prolific facets of the University. But behind all of those events there’s no large bureaucracy or revolving door of interns to be found. Instead, there’s just a handful of students from a variety of academic majors, a fleet of volunteers – 386 to be precise – and Katherine and her two Assistant House Managers surrounded by an aura of enthusiasm.

“I don’t think the general public realizes how many people it takes to do this type of work,” Trapanovski explained. The number of volunteers, the coordination, how much thought goes into taking care of the patrons. We’re always thinking about that. There are so many things that happen behind the scenes: hiring staff, meetings, getting the information and getting it done. I call it the magic, how you make it happen without people realizing it’s going on. We’re always thinking and doing.”

Laying claim on everything that happens ‘from the edge of stage out to the house’ as her own, there is no shortage of logistical details to keep Katherine on her toes as she makes sure that everything is running smoothly. Constantly executing and planning for the next event, the day-to-day grind has not diminished Katherine’s passion for the job she has had since 1996. If anything, it has grown steadily over the last twelve years.

“It’s amazing to be working for the Center,” Trapanovski explained. “I feel really lucky to be in a place where people’s ideas are listened to. There’s a feeling here that if you have the energy we can get it done. It’s liberating. I don’t think you find that in a lot of places.”

Although Katherine’s creativity doesn’t always get to shine through in the methodical details, the other half of her job, outreach, has presented new opportunities to work on cutting-edge programs. Leaving the confines of the Center to make a difference in the community, Trapanovski has assisted on high profile events such as the Dalai Lama’s visit to Buffalo two years ago. Other programs, such as the Arts in Healthcare Initiative, have helped to bring artists together with people at local hospitals in need of healing and recovery. Aside from the Dance Series that Katherine counts among her favorite events, it is clear that the outreach portion of her job holds a special place for the director in her job description.

“One of our main priorities is these outreach programs,” Trapanovski said. “It has been a challenge and a learning experience. It’s important to not just the Center but also the University’s mission that we’re reaching out into the community to provide services or support or information. We’re such a large part of what’s going on and you can’t do things in isolation. It’s important that if we have the skills and resources to give back that we do.”

Even though the recent economic climate has forced everyone except the New York Yankees to cut back, the Center has been able to be more prudent towards their expenses without having to reduce the amount of programs and services that they offer. Taking fewer risks and being more cautious with its budget, a large majority of what the Center is able to do would not be possible without the standing body of volunteers who share not only their time but also experience. Perhaps the biggest testament to the Center’s impact on the community is that even in these tough times the influx of volunteers has not stopped or even slowed down.

“There actually is a waiting list for our volunteer corps that takes about a year to get onto,” Trapanovski explained. “People call us all the time and all we can say is that we’ll put you on our waiting list. People are willing to wait, and in all my time at this position I’ve never had anyone say they didn’t want to.”

Behind the Scenes: Joel Thompson

By Jeffrey Levine

It may not have been an after school paper route, but Joel Thompson certainly had his fair share of jobs when he was in school.

While he was studying communications at the University at Buffalo, Thompson got his first exposure to sales by working for the Buffalo Sabres and Buffalo Bisons ticket offices. After graduating, Joel moved farther into the box office by taking a position at Ticketmaster where he gained valuable experience – not to mention countless memories – by working on such high-profile events as Woodstock ’99 and the 2001 Presidential Inauguration of George W. Bush. Two years after starting at Ticketmaster, however, the lure of his alma mater proved too strong and Joel returned to UB in 2001.

“When I was at Ticketmaster, the Center for the Arts was one of my clients and I admired the facility and working with the staff,” Thompson explained. So when the opportunity arose I jumped at the chance. I’m a UB grad, and there’s always a sense of attachment to the campus as a whole.”

Starting his current position as Director of Ticket Operations at the Center for the Arts with a very impressive background, Joel knows firsthand that his role is more than just distributing tickets.

“We are literally the first people you see when you enter the Center, so the customer’s experience starts in our hands,” Thompson said. “As the saying goes, ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression,’ and I take that very seriously. My goal, even if the customer is purchasing online or by phone, is to make sure our patrons have easy access to not only tickets, but also any other information they might be looking for at the time of purchase.”

While Joel’s dedication to customer service is not limited by medium, he has noticed that more and more people are changing the way they buy tickets. Having watched the industry evolve over the last decade, Joel and his staff have had to adapt to better support and protect their customers.

“The ticket industry has changed dramatically in the last 10 years,” Thompson explained. “Part of my job is to make sure that the Center stays on the cutting edge of new technology that comes available, and we’ve done a good job in that area. The Center was one of the first venues in WNY to employ ticket bar coding to combat counterfeiting. As we shift further into the digital age, even more changes are coming. I expect that very soon our customers will be coming to the venue with tickets downloaded to their cell phones. When I was working at Ticketmaster we were surprised when we saw 50 percent of tickets sold online. Now, it’s not abnormal to see 80 percent sold online.”

While accounting for the 100,000+ tickets sold every season is a large task in and of itself, Joel also serves on the Center’s programming committee with Assistant Director Rob Falgiano and Director of Marketing Dave Wedekindt. Although Joel admits that he would love to bring Chris Isaak to the Center, he was very candid about the importance of putting the season’s schedule ahead of his own preferences. Still, it is good to have someone who can appreciate the arts greeting us at the door.

“Personally, I’ve always been a music lover across a range of genres from rock,” – adding parenthetically “Springsteen is my all-time favorite” – “country, pop and I think that makes a position in a venue like the Center all the more fun and interesting to me. Like my own tastes, we do such a wide array of events, and no two events are ever really the same. It keeps the day-to-day operations exciting and keeps you fresh even when you’ve been putting in the long hours necessary to be successful.”

Behind the Scenes: John Rickus

By Jeffrey Levine

Some children dream about becoming astronauts or musicians or teachers or doctors, but John Rickus didn’t happen to be one of those kinds of kids.

“Probably the earliest memory I have of an interest in stage was back in third of fourth grade,” Rickus reflected. “I was in the auditorium watching a musical concert being put on by the school and the chorus was singing a song about rainbows. Then as they were singing, the stage lights began to turn different colors. It’s a relatively simple effect but as a young child I was enthralled to see the different combinations of lighting. It was so interesting that they could match what they were singing about with what was onstage. Lucky for me, the person doing the lighting was a neighbor of mine in high school and I was able to speak with him and get a tour of the booth.”

Call it love at first sight, but that performance was a seminal moment in young John’s life. The son of a Lutheran Minister, John’s family moved to Buffalo from Missouri in 1976 and once here, John had a chance to work on his high school’s stage crew as well as join the AV club. When it came time for college, it was no surprise that the boy who took apart all of the electronics in the house - even though he admitted he never got that good at putting them back together – chose to pursue a degree at Valparaiso in communications with a major in Television Theatre Arts. It was a choice, however, that would soon get overshadowed by live performance.

“To me, television and film always felt fractured,” Rickus explained. “You never really have a feeling of continuity in television and as a worker you never felt like you were part of the whole production so to speak. If you’re going to work in that industry you have to be okay with not knowing what the final product will be. You just do your job that day, which is probably fine for a lot of people. But over the course of a college career I definitely developed a real affinity for the liveness of theatre. Having things happen in real time is something I value. It’s all about being involved in events that actually happen in front of a real audience and the collaborative aspect that comes from the experience.”

Taking his show on the road, both literally and metaphorically, John came back to Buffalo after graduation to hone his craft with Indigo Productions full time. Working upwards of 50 to 80 and sometimes even 90 hours a week, the years of loading, unloading, setup and breakdown began to wear on John, prompting his transition to one established venue.

“I’m not saying that as I got older I wussed out but I got tired of working outside in the cold,” Rickus explained. “Coming to the Center was a big change but it was appealing to come to the same venue and not have to build it from scratch everyday. The people there at the time were also a big draw. It seemed like a really good collaborative team that I could fit into and it still feels that way.”

Having earned his stripes at Indigo, John translated his first opportunity at the Center, a temporary position filling in for someone on leave, into a full time gig. Working his way up through the ranks with hard work, unflagging dedication, and creative troubleshooting, John was promoted to head carpenter and now manages the collaborative team that he had always wanted to be a part of.

“The title of head carpenter is a bit of a misnomer because there’s not a lot of carpentry involved in what I do,” Rickus said. Basically, it’s a title that’s been around for a long time and it refers to the person on crew who is the chief for the show going on. What I’m really in charge of is coordinating logistics between departments. In other words, I help figure out when’s the best time for everyone to do what they need to do.”

While there is a very practical side to what John does - keeping everyone on schedule, coordinating setup and breakdown, building his own custom contraptions – philosophically he chooses not to divide the disparate production teams into their own separate entities. Instead, John instills in his crew, about 80 percent of which is comprised of students, to think of all the different elements existing together in what he titles with air quotes as, ‘the show.’ It is this dedication to the whole that brings all of the unnoticed and intangibles of backstage to the audience and the performers.

“As I look back at it, the hours that you work in this business can get really, really long but it’s something that everyone puts up with,” Rickus explained. “We all realize that what we’re doing isn’t necessarily brain surgery which is not to downgrade what we do as artists and designers. If we can help audiences enjoy a performance and if we can make an enjoyable live event for them, then there’s value in that alone.”