The Resident

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SJ Rep renamed 'Hammer'in honor of couple

By Mary Gottschalk

The San Jose Repertory Theatre in downtown San Jose now carries the name of the two people many consider most responsible for its construction--Susan and Phil Hammer.

The Redevelopment Agency, which is paying the $60,000 cost of the sign, was scheduled this week, pending the weather, to honor the Rose Garden couple that helped open the theater a decade ago.

Former San Jose Mayor Susan recalls, "In early 1991 in my first State of the City speech, I said 'I hope we can build a new home for the Rep.' That started the wheels in motion to do the funding, get it designed and get it built.

"It was my first capital project when I became mayor.

"My husband Phil and I have been supporters from day one and contributors."

Attorney Phil says he was the second person San Jose Rep founder Jim Reber approached about starting a professional theater locally.

It was a wise choice as Phil joined the founding board and has served three different terms as president and about 15 years on and off the board since the Rep's founding in 1980. He has also been both a major contributor and fundraiser, helping it become the fastest-growing regional theater in the United States within its first two years.

Bill Ekern, director of project management for the redevelopment agency, says naming the building after the couple is an unusual honor.

"It's pretty rare. There are only two buildings in San Jose that are named after living people at this point," Ekern says.

The other is the McEnery Convention Center, named after Tom McEnery, another former mayor.

Phil says he believes the reason Reber first approached him is because he had learned about Phil's brother Mark, a professional actor who was then employed at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Reber envisioned San Jose Rep becoming as successful as Arena Stage, founded in 1950 and considered a model for regional, nonprofit resident theater companies.

Phil says he never asked his wife of 47 years to build the theater.

"She knew it was important to me, but she did it because it was important to her," he says.

Susan concurs, saying, "I worked with the Rep and the Redevelopment Agency when I was mayor to make this dream of his and mine and Timothy Near and all the other people who love and support the Rep. I took the lead in making it a reality, but a lot of other people have worked for it."

The reason, she says, is "I think that a community needs to have a variety of arts and education opportunities for the people who live and work here.

"Having a professional theater company, along with an art museum and good libraries and a major university are all part of the package that makes people want to live and work here."

Looking back, Phil says, "We spent the first 15 years or so of our existence doing our shows in the Montgomery Theater. It's a lovely space, but it lacked a whole bunch of things necessary to really do shows in a class way, and the demands on the Montgomery from other groups drastically restricted what we could with the Rep.

"From quite early in its existence, I headed up exploratory groups, and there were a couple of committees. We did a feasibility study, maybe more than one, looking at what a capital campaign would consist of.

"Susan knew about all of that and appreciated that having a theater that was the joint product of city funding and a capital campaign by the Rep would be a really vital part of the downtown arts scene, along with the museum and the symphony and the ballet.

"I think it was pretty obvious that the city needed to take the leadership on it because the ability to create a facility like we ultimately have and had dreamed about, it needed to be a partnership between the community and the theater."

Near, artistic director of the Rep for the past 20 years, along with Alexandra Urbanowski, former managing director, have believed from the first that the Rep's theater should bear the name of Susan and Phil Hammer.

"Alexandra and I have been talking about how we were going to make this happen since before the building happened," Near says.

"We were both in agreement it should be named for Susan and Phil. We felt they should be acknowledged for their extraordinary dedication of putting arts at the forefront of the vision for San Jose."

The theater, which opened in 1997, was built with $28.5 million in funds from redevelopment and more than $5 million raised under the direction of Urbanowski.

It was not just the building of the theater, but more how it was built that is most impressive and important to Near.

"What Susan created as mayor was extremely unique," Near says.

"She created a collaboration between the city, redevelopment and San Jose Rep. She said, 'We know how to build buildings; we'll provide the land and quite a lot of resources, and you're going to bring your expertise to the table.'

"One of the best theaters in the United States was built. Artists come here and are amazed at what an extraordinary theater this is.

"Other cities build theaters and they're disasters, but Susan created an environment of trust and dedication and passion for this project that allowed us all to work very well and collaboratively together. It was wonderful, exciting and positive always."

Given Phil's dedication to the Rep and the fact his late brother Mark was an actor, it's easy to wonder if he ever harbored dreams of acting himself.

"I was always hugely jealous of my brother," Phil says with a laugh.

"We were at Stanford together. I'm two years older, and he was the director for two or three years of the Big Game Gaieties, among a lot of things he did in drama.

"He was able to get me into that show two times.

"I have no talent, but I have a really loud singing voice, and I have a lack of fear about appearing on a stage. The Big Game Gaieties is a rollicking, quite often very funny group of musical skits about campus things and what a terrible place Cal is. It is college humor."

Although the Hammers learned more than two years ago that their name would eventually be on the Rep, they are far from blasé.

"I am pleased and surprised," Susan says. "How can you not be humbled and pleased by something like this? I know we both are."

Phil says when he first learned of it, "I said, 'I ain't dead yet.' I thought these things happened only after you died.

"It's a terrific thing to be honored this way and also for me to get joint recognition with Susan. There's all kinds of justification for naming it after her, but they want to name it for both of us."