Performing Arts Centers were the venue of choice for Stephen Ray (Steve) Martin, and he delighted in bringing that community together through IAVM. He served as chair of the Performing Arts Sector Committee from 1999 to 2004, leaving his mark on that group’s close camaraderie and educational focus.
Born July 3, 1955, Martin died Jan. 20, 2025, at the age of 69, in Salem, Ore., where he started his career of “enjoying retirement” in 2017. He is one who considered IAVM “family,” and benefited from mentors and mentoring his entire professional career.
Steve Martin, left, at the opening of Pikes Peak Center, Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1982, with Kirk Metzger, CVE, and Richard Cotton.
He managed the Historic Elsinore Theatre in Salem from 2005-2016. He started his PAC career at Pikes Peak Centre in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he worked from 1982-2005.
He joined IAVM in 1989 and attended just about every conference from 1997 through 2014. Martin was among the founders and organizers of IAVM’s Performing Arts Facility Administrators Seminar (PAFAS), which morphed into the annual Performing Arts Managers Conference (PAMC).
“During Steve’s long career in the performing arts, he was both a technical director and venue manager,” noted longtime friend Larry Henley, CVE, UNLV, highlighting Martin’s diverse skills.
Kirk Metzger, CVE, first met Martin in the fall of 1974 when he enrolled in the new theatre graduate program at UNLV. Martin was an undergraduate, a theatre major.
“We worked numerous plays together, for probably three years, until Steve graduated and went off to teach theatre at Centre College in Danville, Ky.,” Metzger shared in an email. “Prior to his graduation, I had been appointed to open and manage the university’s new 2,000-seat concert hall. All my stagehands were theatre undergrads including Steve and Larry Henley. Somewhere during that period Steve met (his wife-to-be) Tina. We knew that Tina was the one for Steve, because she endured the five-hour drive through the desert to Southern California without air conditioning. Steve thought using AC would adversely affect his gas mileage, so he drove with the windows open.”
In 1982, when Metzger moved to Colorado Springs to be the executive of the new Pikes Peak Center, a 2,000-seat opera house, he needed an operations director. “I hired Steve as a known, trustworthy, knowledgeable, and dedicated theatre person. Steve brought Larry Henley to our operation as a lighting designer and stagehand.” Henley later returned to UNLV to run the concert hall.
When Metzger left Colorado Springs to open the Woodlands Pavilion (AKA Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion) in suburban Houston, Martin was appointed director at Pikes Peak Center
When Martin retired, “he concentrated on his golf game eventually achieving a handicap of, I think, seven,” Metzger related grudgingly, having played longer but apparently not as well.
Their daughters were the same age, and many an IAVM conference found them together. “I recall an IAVM conference where Steve’s daughter Alison and my Kelsey were seven-year-old trade show rats scarfing up all the food being offered.” (Metzger’s now-grown daughter, Kelsey Covart, is the COO of a VenuWorks-managed facility in suburban Minneapolis and was in the first class of IAVM’s 30-under-30. “When Kelsey joined the business, I told her that venue management was much different than free Dipp’n’ Dots on the trade show floor—she didn’t listen,” Metzger added.)
Martin gave back to IAVM in numerous ways, serving on the board of directors from 2004-2006, and joining the Professional Development Committee, the Technologies Task Force, the VenueConnect Planning Committee, and the Business Development Task Force, besides his ongoing role with Performing Arts.
He is survived by wife Tina and daughter Alison.
