Mondavi Center

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monday.jpgApproaching the Mondavi Center from Campus.

Location
One Shields Ave. (Campus), next to the Buehler Alumni & Visitors Center
Ticket Office Hours
Mon-Sat 12:00PM-6:00PM
Also open one hour prior to all ticketed events
Phone
(530)754-2787 Ticket Office
(530)754-5000 Administration
Website
[WWW]http://www.mondaviarts.org (recommended for the opera crowd)
[WWW]http://www.mondavistudents.org (recommended for the broke student)
[WWW]Facebook Page

The Mondavi Center for the Arts opened in 2002 on the site of Lot 1A. As UC Davis' beautiful new home for its University Symphony Orchestra and other cultural events. It gives a more upscale environment to host events than Freeborn Hall. The center is named after the late vintner Robert Mondavi and his wife Margrit Mondavi, who donated $10 million toward the building cost.

monnight.jpgAnd as seen from the front. insidemondavi.jpgThe stage

Performances

Every first-year undergraduate and graduate UC Davis student, as well as all first-year UC Davis transfer students are entitled to one free ticket to any performance on the current calendar. Details can be found on [WWW]their website but this includes everything from ballet, dance, and theater companies; retrospective films; live music performances by artists like Elvis Costello and Wynton Marsalis; and spoken word events featuring guests such as Ira Glass (NPR's This American Life host) and Arianna Huffington (founder of The Huffington Post).

In addition, all students (no matter which school you attend) get a 50% discount. Some find the performances to still be a bit pricey, but this is still a good deal for acts that might otherwise be completely unaffordable. Other performances, like a Mahler concert, can run as low as $14 for non-students. Given the headliners and famous speakers that the Center draws this can be a good place for celebrity sightings.

Exclusive ticket promotions and giveaways are available throughout the year and the only way to find out about these is to sign up on the Mondavi Center Facebook or Twitter page. There are also a number of free shows at the Center sponsored by various campus departments. Please check the Mondavi Center event schedule for a list.

If you're a student, join the student listserve and periodically they will e-mail "specials" to students. Usually a show is $7 to all students and sometimes free Woodstock's pizza. The catch is when you order via online (you have to), there is a fee for online purchases (Believed to be $2, please check on this).

Jackson Hall

Jackson Hall is the main event room in the Mondavi Center. It has four tiers and areas of seating and can hold up to 1800 people.

MondaviInside.jpg

The hall is named after Davis resident Barbara K. Jackson and her late husband W. Turrentine "Turpie" Jackson, who was a UCD history professor. Jackson made her $5 million gift in March of 2001, a critical time when the fund drive for the (then unnamed) center appeared to be in danger of faltering. If her gift had not been eclipsed soon after by the Mondavis' donation, we might very well have the UC Davis Jackson Center instead.

Barbara Jackson has her own box seat in the hall, shown at the arrow in the picture above. Even ushers rarely see her, since she usually comes through the performers' entrance and walks up the fire exit stairs just before the curtain.

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre

The Vanderhoef Studio Theatre is for smaller, more intimate performances. The seating can be rearranged to hold up to 250 people. The three arrangements are:

Standard Stage faces guests
Thrust Smaller stage surrounded by seating on three sides
Cabaret Smaller stage faces guests sitting at small tables

The theatre was named in honor of Larry and Rosalie Vanderhoef in recognition of their efforts to establish the Mondavi Center.

Notes

Parking

Parking is available across the street in the parking structure. TAPS works every night that the Mondavi holds an event and charges $6 per vehicle. The average wait time to get out of the parking lot is 15 minutes (thanks to TAPS blocking off exits). Options to avoid this wait is parking in other parking lots (some have visitor machines that put out visitor permits), leave the performance early, or sit in your car for 20 minutes while the traffic clears out. The closest lots are 3 (next to Mrak Hall) and 46 (next to Academic Surge), which allow for visitor parking after 5pm. On the weekend, TAPS does not enforce parking so you can avoid paying the $6 by using one of these lots (or nearby streets) rather than the Mondavi parking structure.

Associated Programs

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