Norton
Danville, Ky – Next week Steven Hoffman, executive director of the Norton Center for the Arts at Centre College, will be making sure Huey Lewis and the News is ready to take the stage and entertain his Danville crowd. But that’s next week.
For the past year he’s been readying his facility and its staff to welcome the world’s media as the VP Debate was awarded to Centre. Though the event will have more attention paid to it, his job remains largely the same.
“The variables change but the process is fairly similar with providing hospitality, providing security… just that comfort for the guests, making sure they know where their seats are,” Hoffman said Thursday afternoon.
The Norton Center for the Arts is no stranger to big events. Not only did they host the 2000 VP Debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman, two years ago the Center played host to a performance by the renown Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the wunderkind Venezuelan Music Director of the LA Phil, Gustavo Dudamel.
“Sometimes (we’re) the little engine that could. The college… it doesn’t matter where we are, how big we are, if we want something we’re going to go after. The reality is there’s going to have to be a lot of other elements that come into play and the stars have to align a certain way, but ultimately it really just needs to be we can do it and make it work,” he said.
Making it work to get tickets for the debate event has proven difficult, but not for Hoffman who said he could happily tell people wanting in that they had to contact the Commission on Presidential Debates. The Norton Center had no control over that.
However, through a lottery for student tickets and his staff made up of Centre kids, Hoffman estimates that more than 10 percent of those attending Centre will be in the hall to witness the debate tonight.