St. Margaret’s Epsicopal School is pleased to announce that the Performing Arts Center has been named the Darcy Rice Center for the Arts, in honor of the school’s longtime director of the arts who retired in June after a 22-year career at the helm. 

  

Naming the building after Mr. Rice had been in the works for a long time. The Nicholas family provided the foundational gift to St. Margaret’s to build the state-of-the-art Performing Arts Center, which was completed in 2012. As part of that gift, the Nicholas family retained naming rights for the building.

 

“From the very beginning, our family believed that Darcy Rice was the only person worthy of having his name on the Performing Arts Center,” said Stacey Nicholas, a St. Margaret’s Trustee Emeritus and parent of three alumni who were all involved in the arts. “We thought that when he retired, it would be the perfect time to make that happen.”

 

Mr. Rice retired at the end of the 2021-2022 school year after 22 years leading St. Margaret’s arts department. Among Mr. Rice’s numerous contributions to the school, he oversaw, integrated and coordinated performing arts, visual arts and technical arts at the school, directed 53 performing-arts productions and taught theater classes for many years. 

 

He was also instrumental in the design of the Performing Arts Center which now bears his name, bringing his vision for an arts educational center to life, including specifying different acoustic designs, performance spaces, classroom studio features, a customizable main performance space, green room spaces for the multitude of annual live performances, a wardrobe studio and 11 private practice rooms available to students every day. 

 

The Nicholas family did not tell Mr. Rice of their plan to name the facility after him (“we had to keep the secret for a very long time,” Ms. Nicholas said). Only after he retired did they reach out to the Rice family and St. Margaret’s and share the news. “We are so overjoyed to be able to do this for him,” Ms. Nicholas said. 

 

Signage with the new name was installed on the façade of the building just prior to this week’s production of the Upper School play The Importance of Being Earnest, which has brought Mr. Rice back to St. Margaret’s to serve as guest director. 

 

“When Darcy Rice joined St. Margaret’s as a member of the professional community, he was a professional artist volunteering as a parent to direct a school production in quaint Sillers Hall. From there, he literally built the performing arts program,” Head of School Will Moseley said. “He envisioned a world-class program, designed curriculum, hired the best artist-faculty and was instrumental in the design of the performing arts center as well. Mr. Rice put our arts program on the map and made it a destination for many Tartans who sought arts as an essential part of their academic pursuits. 

 

“On behalf of the entire St. Margaret’s community, we congratulate Mr. Rice for this amazing honor and well-deserved acknowledgement of his vast contributions to St. Margaret’s. We are also grateful to the Nicholas family for their continuing love, support and generosity toward St. Margaret’s Episcopal School.”

 

The Darcy Rice Center for the Arts is a 45,000-square foot teaching and learning facility supporting instrumental music, choral music, dance and theater education and programs. The facility features two professional performance theaters--Hurlbut Theater and McGregor Family Theater—in addition to music teaching rooms, a professional dance studio, a sound and video production studio and private practice rooms.