Wolf Trap’s Next Chapter

BUCOLIC SETTING: “Our best moments are when someone walks in for the first time,” says Sara Beesley, Wolf Trap’s vice president of programming and production. (Courtesy venue)

Ongoing Renovations Continue The Cause At National Park For The Arts

“I think of this time as the most high-impact time for Wolf Trap,” says Arvind Manocha, president and CEO of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. “We were founded in 1971 and this is the beginning of our next 50 years.”

The chief executive says this, most significantly, from inside Wolf Trap’s brand-spanking new Meadow Commons, a three-story $15 million facility designed by Gensler opened in late May.
The new building sits at the epicenter of this 100-plus-acre bucolic Northern Virginia National Park, only 30 minutes outside of D.C. It’s also adjacent to the site’s hallmark Filene Center, a 7,028-capacity amphitheater.

The multipurpose structure includes 15 new concession windows serving patrons on the lower orchestral level and the top plaza back-ended by a new commercial kitchen with expanded locally sourced offerings. Food and beverage is run internally. The Commons also features picnic terraces, a donors’ lounge, upgraded bathrooms, an ADA-compliant elevator and a balcony offering views of the park, which includes a large grassy knoll overlooking a small creek and sylvan hiking trails.

Construction of Meadow Commons, which replaced an antiquated structure demolished last September, was funded entirely by a capital campaign that raised $75 million from donors. It was initially undertaken as part of Wolf Trap’s 50th anniversary that fell in the middle of the pandemic-afflicted year of 2021. The delay, however, helped the initiative surpass its initial $50 million goal by another $25 million.

“We called our campaign, ‘The Next Chapter.’ That was our headline because we were anticipating 2021,” Manocha says. “Once you get to 50, it’s a wonderful milestone, it’s easy to celebrate, but I didn’t want our 50th anniversary to simply be a way for us to say, ‘Hey, look at all these things we’ve done.’ We wanted it to be the beginning of all the things we’re going to do.”

The Meadow Commons is surrounded by other significant upgrades built over the course of the pandemic that cost another $15 million. These include four new event pavilions atop the hillside meadow with capacities ranging from 70 seated to 450 standing.

Additionally, the plan includes upgrades to the Filene Center, which over the course of the COVID closures, updated its signature Douglas fir wooden siding, refurbished seating—adding much-needed center aisles to the bowl’s continental seating plan—added a new sound system, lights and completely overhauled the artist backstage area.

The luxe artist accommodations, located on an entire floor beneath the stage, resembles a modern designed boutique hotel with a wellness room, a commons area, a large kitchen and eating area, 11 private dressing rooms and three ensemble rooms, a game room and a tunnel to the artists’ tour buses. The main artist suite includes a patio, Baldwin piano and dining table.

During Wolf Trap’s recent Out & About Festival, “celebrating music, nature and pride” with a stellar bill including Brittany Howard, Jenny Lewis, Kim Gordon, Lawrence, Quinn Christopherson and Okan, the bustling artist area felt like the hippest café in the world.

“Our best moments are when someone walks in for the first time,” says Sara Beesley, Wolf Trap’s vice president of programming and production. “We had Wilco a couple of days ago and it was their first time back since the renovation. Being able to hear people who remember the old space experience the new space — because it’s really drastically different from what it was — they loved it.”
Beesley says the industry, too, is similarly enthusiastic about the upgrades. “It’s a lovely venue,” says High Road Touring founder Frank Riley, who is Wilco’s agent. “There is a built-in audience that the venue serves, and the audience supports the venue. Successful venues need to have supportive communities, and Wolf Trap certainly does.”

Indeed, integral to Wolf Trap’s economic model as a nonprofit operating in partnership with the National Park Service is a strong community of nearly 11,000 members who support the venue with annual memberships ranging in price from $50 to $1,500. All members receive presale ticket access.

Wolf Trap in return provides a social good with reasonably priced shows (lawn tickets, which make up half of the capacity, for many shows start at $35), free parking and two completely free shows throughout the summer. There’s an educational component funded through philanthropy that includes programs like Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods, as well as grants, an internship program and Wolf Trap Opera, a renowned training program for early career opera singers housed during the summer in The Barns at Wolf Trap. The two restored 18th-century barns reside on another part of the Wolf Trap grounds and include a restaurant and 382-seat theater hosting shows between October and May when the Filene Center’s summer season is over.

Wolf Trap, for Washingtonians of a certain age, was a suburban shed in Vienna, Virginia, the kind where parents would drag kids to picnic and watch the National Symphony Orchestra — not necessarily a place to take in “cooler,” commercial and critically acclaimed music.

What a difference a few decades make. With Beesley and her all-female team overseeing booking, this year’s concerts include a variety of acts such as Beck, Black Pumas, Julieta Venegas, Nas, Waxahatchee, Patti LaBelle, Trey Anastasio, Lauren Daigle, The New Pornographers, TLC, En Vogue and Jody Watley, Elvis Costello and Daryl Hall, Clint Black, Boyz II Men, Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Isbell, The Roots, and more James Taylor, Band of Horses, Amadou & Mariam, Lyle Lovett, Boy George and Ben Platt.

To date, the capital improvements and the quality bookings are leading to greater successes. “These last three years after COVID have been the most successful three years in our history In terms of numbers of tickets sold, so the numbers of people coming through the gate, but also in terms of the level of philanthropy,” Manocha said.

The 2023 summer season at the Filene Center brought in $26 million in revenue, a 27% increase over 2022, according to the Wolf Trap Foundation. The building also operated at 80% average paid capacity with 54% of ticket buyers new patrons and 40% of all performances sold out. During the decade that Manocha has been at the helm, revenue has doubled and the number of sold-out shows has increased nearly 25%.

The genus of Wolf Trap’s ever-expanding 50-year-plus mission begins with Catherine Filene Shouse, a D.C.-area socialite, benefactor, lover of the arts (especially opera and the symphony) and nature. Her original concept was to create an accessible, egalitarian and community-based culture complex in the Northern Virginia woods.

“If you go back to 1966-’67 when this project was conceived, (Shouse) came up with this idea and said, ‘I’m going to build a performing arts center for the nation. I want it to be the first National Park for the arts’,” Manocha explains. “‘I want it to be on a joint venture with the Park Service so that it’s permanently protected land. I’m going to build this incredibly contemporary amphitheater.’”

Wolf Trap’s partnership with the National Park Service is unlike any venue anywhere in the U.S. (Red Rocks is run by the city and county of Denver). It’s a strange and wonderful feeling to drive into a venue and have park rangers with wide-brim hats and olive button-ups direct you to the free parking lots. It’s this foundational partnership that’s helped Wolf Trap sustain its longevity and continued evolution—including its current capital improvements.

This is not Manocha’s first major venue refurb rodeo — far from it. Before moving to “The DMV,” (The District, Maryland and Virginia), he helped open Los Angeles’ iconic Disney Hall in 2003 as the LA Philharmonic’s COO working closely with starchitect Frank Gehry, who he says based his designs around serving the musicians. Manocha, 52, then went on to become general manager of the Hollywood Bowl, which was in the midst of its own ambitious capital improvement plan.

When Manocha arrived at Wolf Trap in 2013, he immediately saw the opportunities. “I came into this experience and a couple of things were clear to me,” he said. “The raw material here was amazing. The community support had never wavered. It’s always been a popular destination. I had some thoughts about programming and updating, and so that was a big focus.”

The Wolf Trap Foundation head says thus far they’ve spent roughly $35 million in upgrades and have immediate plans for additional capital improvements. “There’s another building we’re going to replace. We’re going to redo the front entryway and the gate, which have been in the same location for years and the security needs and equipment has changed and we have tents for that now. We’re going to get rid of the tents and make something more architecturally befitting because that’s the front door of the building. We also have improvements we’re going to make for our children’s theater.”

Wolf Trap, according to Manocha, has a master construction plan that goes out 30 years and will require more fundraising and coordination with their National Park Service partner.

“It’s not always easy when you try to work through making changes on federal property for a very good reason: We want our federal space to be protected, we don’t want to go to the Grand Canyon (for example) and have somebody screw it all up,” he said. “These are our national parks and they belong to all of us as Americans.”