Philadelphia Weekly

For the first few months, the question was always: Will anybody show up? While the organizers—mostly Penn students and their friends—milled about the Rotunda’s dark back room, just two or three attendees sitting on the carpet in the middle of the floor could make the space seem bigger and emptier than if no one were in it. Inevitably, a few more would trickle in and the artists would eventually take the stage (or the floor or the balcony or wherever the muse struck them), but early on, those dark couple of hours were always a question.

Now, a decade later, the Rotunda has played host to more than 2,000 events and a quarter of a million people. When attendees pack it in for this weekend’s 10th birthday bash, there’s more guarantee of a crowd, and fewer people will need to ask where the entrance is (on the side in the back, not through the row of arched double doors in front). But minus the apprehension, the vibe they walk into will be much the same.

“What’s amazing about it is how little has changed,” says Andrew Zitcer, who launched the project out of an undergraduate Penn class in the fall of ’98. Lights went up on the first show a year later. “We set up an architecture to empower community artists and didn’t set up many filters—and that hasn’t changed.”

Zitcer, working with like-minded Penn students at the time, began what was then the Foundation Community Arts Initiative with the goal of creating a space where university students and West Philly residents could come together through the arts—a fairly lofty ideal coming as it did at the end of the ’90s, a decade marked by hostile town-gown relations for Penn. 


“We always started from the premise that it would be a community gathering place for the promotion of arts and culture,” says Zitcer, now 31. “The values and the work were key, as was the sense of access and celebration. That was a really powerful thing for us to create on 40th Street when 40th Street was just being reimagined.”


The area around 40th and Walnut, now one of the city’s major retail and entertainment corridors, looked very different at the time. There was no Bridge Cinema, no Distrito, no Metropolitan Bakery, no Marathon Grill, no Fresh Grocer. What was there was the majestic, empty old building that was formerly the First Church of Christ Scientist. 


“There’s a lot of energy around here now,” says Gina Renzi, 31, the Rotunda’s director. “I don’t want to sound conceited for the Rotunda, but I really think we’re part of it because we bring something different every day, which means we’re bringing different people to the area.”


This weekend’s 10th birthday celebration gives a decent snapshot of the Rotunda’s variety of programming. Friday night the venue hosts neo-soul and synth-jazz lyricism with Dime Universal and HipHop Poeticz. Saturday afternoon is a BYOD (bring-your-own-drum) drum jam hosted by Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, followed by an evening marathon that ranges from Brazilian folk (Old Goats) to pile-driving rock (Stinking Lizaveta) to folk (Lillie Ruth Bussey) to spoken word (PlumDragoness and the Elements), along with a slew of others (including the Notekillers, Drake, and MC Ramshackle). Plus, naturally, birthday cake. Then Sunday night finds the West Philly Orchestra’s Brendan Cooney playing a live piano score to Buster Keaton’s One Week and Harold Lloyd’s Never Weaken . 


While few who come will have heard of every performer, there were probably people in the crowd who’d never heard of John Legend when he performed at the Rotunda either. 


“Most people don’t really know who these performers are and they still come out,” says Renzi. “There’s so much going on locally, and so often you don’t know what’s in your own city. But you come out on a snowy Monday, and you’ll be surprised.” 


Other big names over the years have included Matisyahu and Immortal Technique, and lesser-known but critically important artists like Sekou Sundiata and Charles Cohen. 


“We just had a Fringe show here— The Gonzales Cantata —that was in The Wall Street Journal’ s law blog, on Rachel Maddow , MSNBC,” says Renzi. And other series have been running for almost as long as the Rotunda itself: the ambient noise of Gate, hip-hop/B-boy/B-girling of the Gathering, Mark Christman’s Ars Nova Workshop. And the list is always growing.


“I want to infuse more education into the programming and look at sustainability in business and the environment,” Renzi says. “We’re constantly looking at how we can engage with the public and not just pipe in arts events.”


Despite the future fame of a number of Rotunda performers, the objective has always been quality over quantity—something of a luxury, as the venue is supported financially by Penn. But it has a direct effect on the kind of art that happens there and who comes to see it. 


“It’s a weird kind of unambitious goal,” says Zitcer. “The goal was always to be a place of gathering and self-expression, and not to be the biggest, baddest, famous-est venue in the city. It was to be a welcoming venue. And that’s been achieved. It doesn’t need to change.”


And now that the venue has reached critical mass, reasons to change are fewer than ever. 


“In the past three years people finally know it—more than ever before,” says Renzi. “I feel like we kind of hit our stride. We’ve gotten a sense of what West Philly has to offer and how great it is here, and we just want the rest of the city to know.” ■