Arts patron Roe Green commits $10 million for new theater at Case Western Reserve University’s Maltz Performing Arts Center

With a $10 million gift to Case Western Reserve University, philanthropist Roe Green will support the next phase of renovations at the Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at The Temple – Tifereth Israel.

Roe Green

In honor of Green’s gift, the world-class performance space planned for Maltz Performing Arts Center will be known as the Roe Green Proscenium Theater.

“Arts education can shape young people in such powerful ways,” said Green, CEO of the Roe Green Foundation, which supports social and cultural causes nationally. “My hope is to provide Case Western Reserve students a home where they can grow and kindle their imaginations.”

“Phase Two” of the Maltz Performing Arts Center will expand its educational mission. Plans call for rehearsal studios and a costume and scene shop for students of the university’s Department of Theater.

“Roe’s generous commitment will make an enormous difference for our students and faculty in the performing arts—and for the people who come to see them,” President Barbara R. Snyder said. “The state-of-the-art Roe Green Theater will give actors, dancers and other artists a true opportunity to shine, and we could not be more grateful to her for this support.”

Rendering of the exterior of the Roe Green Proscenium Theater

The first phase of the center’s renovations were supported by lead gifts of more than $30 million by Milton and Tamar Maltz and the Maltz Family Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. Since opening in 2015, the center’s Silver Hall has hosted hundreds of events, including concerts, plays, lectures and readings.

“There’s no lack of talent at Case Western Reserve,” Green said. “We hope to attract even more in the years to come.”

As the anchor of Case Western Reserve’s emerging western campus, the Maltz Performing Arts Center is connected to the university’s main campus and the Cleveland Museum of Art by the Nord Family Greenway, a 430,000-square-foot nature commons completed in May.

A Green legacy

Green’s gift continues her family’s legacy of accomplishment and contributions to Case Western Reserve.

An interior rendering of the Roe Green Proscenium Theater

Her father, Ben C. Green, became the School of Law’s first alumnus named a federal district court judge in 1961, when he was appointed by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. After Judge Green’s passing in 1983, his family made a gift to the law school that endowed a professorship in his name and led to the naming of its law library in his honor.

Northeast Ohio is also home to the Roe Green Center for the School of Theatre and Dance at Kent State University, where Green also created a visiting director series and earned a master’s degree in theater and communications in 1980.

In addition to her philanthropic career, Green has extensive business and stage management experience, including Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, The Cleveland Opera, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and The Singing Angels.

Green also serves as honorary producer of the Cleveland Play House’s New Ground Theater Festival—bringing a playwright to Cleveland to develop new projects—for which she also created the Roe Green Award to support emerging new voices in theater.

For more information, contact Daniel Robison at daniel.robison@case.edu.