Bayview Buzz: Gubernatorial debate coming to an opera house near you

"Very soon, campaign teams, reporters, and TV news vans from across the state will descend on Bayview's quiet Third Street corridor, a potential boon for local mom-and-pop restaurants. But it's also a boon for the opera house. The Ruth Williams Opera House, a 137-year-old, relatively small Victorian theater has for years retired its stage lights and served instead as a neighborhood community center. But Theo Ellington, the interim executive director and candidate for District 10 supervisor, is bringing back its former glory. Since Ellington last year took over the directorship of the opera house, which is named after a local playwright who fought to prevent it from being demolished in the 1950s, it's hosted a concert series of jazz and R&B performers, plays, dance performances, town halls and, now, a state-wide debate, televised by KTVU and Fox 2 News."

"'We're hoping that we will get the necessary eyes on not only the operahouse as an institution, but on the entire southeast side of San Francisco,' said Ellington to Mission Local. Though Ellington says the opera house is a 'performing arts venue first,' civic engagement, he says, is the great equalizer, which he hopes will bring not only the neighborhood, but the rest of the city together - and into the operahouse's seats."

The Ruth Williams Opera House, a 137-year-old Victorian theater on Bayview's Third Street, is being revived as a performing-arts and civic hub under interim executive director Theo Ellington. The venue has hosted jazz and R&B concerts, plays, dance performances and town halls since Ellington took over last year. A statewide gubernatorial debate featuring six candidates will be held there next week, to be televised by KTVU and Fox 2 News and hosted by the Black Action Alliance. Campaign teams and news crews are expected to descend on Third Street, offering a potential boost to local mom-and-pop restaurants. Ellington emphasizes civic engagement as a way to unite the neighborhood and the wider city and to draw audiences into the opera house.

Read at Mission Local