Brian Higgins is looking forward to being around actors on a traveling Broadway stage, rather than politicians he’s watched with dismay acting out on the floor of the House of Representatives.
The congressman, who announced his coming departure in the first week of February after a 19-year tenure, will be formally presented this morning as the next president and chief executive officer of Shea’s Performing Arts Center, confirming what’s been the most poorly kept secret in Buffalo for weeks.
“There is a lot of theater nowadays in Congress,” Higgins told The Buffalo News. “The actors at Shea’s are professional. The actors in Congress, where it’s become increasingly more performative, are not.”
Higgins is leaving his seat in the 435-member House of Representatives to take the helm of the 3,019-seat Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, one of Buffalo’s most popular and well-attended cultural attractions, and two smaller venues, Shea’s Smith Theater and Shea’s 710 Theatre. A student of history, the congressman sees much in common between the theater and representative government.
“Theater has been an essential art form of democracy,” Higgins said, reaching back to Athens, Greece, in the sixth century BC to make his point.
Jonathan Dandes, elected chairman of Shea’s earlier this month, said Higgins was chosen from an extended process guided by a national search firm.
Shea’s search committee, chaired by Dr. Toni Vazquez, included board members and nonmembers alike. More than 100 initial responses were eventually pared to three finalists.
“Brian talked about his love for Shea’s and made believers of everybody,” Dandes said. “Our vision was so closely aligned in terms of what Shea’s is supposed to be all about that it was, quite frankly, a slam dunk.”
Higgins, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Buffalo State University and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard…
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