October 2009. Baton Rouge's lantern on the levee is home to a small theatre with big possibilities.

I have in the past joked that if Baton Rouge had a flag, it would be emblazoned with a pelican shrugging its wings with “If they would just…” written in French underneath.I don’t feel that way so much anymore, partially because of the Shaw Center downtown and the magnetic pull it has exerted on the Baton Rouge community. It may not have created the arts district that some thought might materialize, but I believe its presence has been a large part of getting people over the hurdle of inertia and making downtown Baton Rouge a thriving place to go at night.The heart of the shining boxy lantern on the river is the Manship Theatre, a cozy jewel of a place. When it first opened I had my doubts about it. A 325-seat pocket opera house in Baton Rouge? We had trouble getting people into the large rooms we already have, how were we going add a medium-size one and make it viable?

By making it a part of the cultural landscape and filling the gap between pop and high culture. The show that turned me on to the place the first time was back in early 2007 when punk-turned-Americana (decades before that was a trendy thing to do) singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo performed there. The room has a crystalline, impossibly intimate sound; Escovedo and his guitarist David Polkingham sounded like they were performing for you personally, letting the audience hang on every single word in Escovedo’s dagger-in-the-heart songs.

The audience, split unevenly among three tiers, sits like a bubble surrounding an artist, forming a symbiotic microcosm of performer and listeners. There are shows I missed, like the one that put four masters of song—Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely and John Hiatt—all on one stage; and ones I caught, like banjo ingénue Abigail Washburn backed up by no less a cohort than Béla Fleck. Both of them are the kind of thing of which I would once have said “if they would just…” about. There is not just a great tradition of making music in Louisiana—there is one of listening to it as well.

The theatre has been put to other uses as well, most notably for movies. When the Siegen theatre closed, Baton Rouge lost the closest thing it had to an art house theatre, and in incremental degrees, the Manship Theatre has picked up that slack. It has played host to the Baton Rouge Jewish Film festival which will celebrate its fourth year this coming January, the Q2 Festival geared toward gay cinema, as well as showings from the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers throughout the year, all of which feature films that would never have been seen in the area. It provides its own programming too, such as the cult classic Freaks showing on the Friday before Halloween this year; and Citizen Kane the following Sunday. An added bonus, it should be mentioned, is that it has a cash bar.

The Manship Theatre has found its niche by not having one, offering the events that simply don’t take hold anywhere else in town. The best thing I’ve seen there combined a lot of these elements. There was a screening of the acclaimed film The Promised Land, a heartfelt look at the lives of the members of ‘Lil band ‘O Gold, a Louisiana roots music super-group organized by C.C. Adcock and around the talents of Warren Storm, Steve Riley, Pat Breaux, Dickie Landry, David Egan, David Greely, Dave Ronson, and Richard Comeaux. The film was more than a celebration of the band; it was a celebration of Louisiana itself, a pat on the back that was felt on every person in the audience. Just as the credits rolled, the screen rolled up and Lil Band O’ Gold was there waiting on stage to tear into a ferocious set. There was dancing in the narrow strip between the front row and the stage, and the crowd was immediately on its feet. The love of Louisiana cultures flowed in a tight circuit between the band and the audience.

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