Filmmaker looks to future to preserve the Ioka’s past

Filmmaker Marc Murai wants to turn the closed downtown landmark into the Ioka Digital and Performing Arts Community Center, offering movies, live performances, classes, and workshops in a venue that embraces both its old carbon-rod projector and the latest plasma-screen technology.

“We want to honor the past . . . but look forward to the future,’’ said Murai.

He calls the tin-ceilinged Ioka “a magical place’’ and envisions it busy much of the day, whether with kids learning to edit digital video on an in-house computer system, local bands practicing, or adults watching satellite broadcasts of plays and musical events.

“Before I even came to know the Ioka, it was clear to me that theater spaces were struggling . . . and I couldn’t help but think a big part of the reason is that they have this building sitting there dormant 70 percent of the time,’’ said Murai.

He notes that his group raised $10,000 in two weeks to get off the ground, and that they received more than 1,000 responses to an online survey asking local residents what programming and features they’d like to see. There are significant hurdles ahead, though.

The plan depends on convincing one or more of a small group of potential backers that it’s worth putting up $750,000 to buy the theater - and invest hundreds of thousands more in infrastructure upgrades and new equipment. Murai faces a July 30 deadline to sign a purchase and sale agreement with the owner, Roger Detzler. Detzler arrived a few years ago intending to revitalize the theater himself.

Murai and his team are finishing up their business plan and bringing potential investors to the site. Sipping a smoothie up in the balcony one day last week, he gestured to the grand space in front of him.

“The presentation has to be made here,’’ he said. “You really haven’t experienced the place unless you’ve been able to walk through.’’

Murai’s boyish enthusiasm doesn’t mean he isn’t serious about his vision. The feared alternative is for a developer to buy the building and rebuild the space for condo, office, or retail use, perhaps at best retaining the historic façade.

Among Murai’s supporters are a group of local professionals who got together last year when Detzler said he would have to shut down the theater in December. Their save-the-Ioka Facebook group attracted more than 1,500 supporters.

“Our group’s ultimate goal was to save the theater and have it be a functioning theater, and so our effort is to support anyone who comes along who can help make that happen, in whatever shape it takes,’’ said Carol Walker Aten. “If there’s a viable business plan that comes out of this, there’s no reason why this theater can’t function successfully.’’

Murai is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from California who moved to Bedford, N.H. a couple of years ago when his wife, a doctor, took a job in Derry.

He reconnected with Exeter resident and marketing professional Wendie Leweck, a friend from their days in a high school theater program in Los Angeles.

Murai mentioned that he’d love to run an old theater, and Leweck told him that the Ioka was for sale. The rest may be history.

“We want to be able to not only provide art for people to see, but provide a venue for them to learn how to make that art,’’ Leweck said.

According to a history of the theater, it was founded by Edward Mayer, an Exeter judge who hoped to emulate the success of his uncle, Haverhill theater owner and future Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer. The Ioka opened at 55 Water St. on Nov. 1, 1915, with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.’’

The theater’s name was chosen in a contest, whose winner was a Girl Scout who said Ioka was a Squamscott Indian word for playground. She later became the theater’s cashier, according to the history.

Like many downtown movie palaces in America, the Ioka became run-down by the 1970s, as television and multiplex theaters took much of its audience. In the 1990s, then-owner Jim Blanco revitalized the venue with a vintage concession stand, the basement Club Ioka, and live entertainment in addition to movies.

But neither Blanco nor Detzler could overcome the Ioka’s business challenges. The last straw for Detzler was the looming $150,000 cost of installing a sprinkler system, required by law after The Station nightclub fire.

Murai moved quickly after learning about the Ioka, signing a letter of intent in April.

Since then he’s been multitasking madly, talking with experts in everything from structural integrity to nonprofit organization.

Separate limited liability corporations would be formed to own the building and run the programs, while nonprofit groups would be invited - or created - to organize some of the activities. He is also planning to record the whole process in a documentary.

Murai said the building itself is “really solid,’’ and his group is evaluating a wide range of ways to make it more energy-efficient, such as putting solar panels on the roof. But preservation is important too.

“They’re never going to build another Ioka,’’ Murai said. He pointed to discolored spots along the sides of the pressed-tin ceiling, the effect of years of soot from the gas lamps. “How can you paint over that?’’