Copious Notes

Eastern Kentucky University’s new performing arts center, which is currently under construction, has an executive director.

Katherine Eckstrand. Photo courtesy of EKU.

Katherine Eckstrand, who is currently director of community development for the Ohio Arts Council, will be the director of the Center for the Performing Arts at Eastern Kentucky University, which is scheduled to be completed in the middle of 2011.

The 93,000-square-foot center will include a 2,000-seat theater capable of presenting Broadway-style productions and a “black-box” theater that will seat as many as 250. The center is adjacent to EKU’s business and technology center, on the south side of the Eastern By-Pass, between Lancaster Road and Kit Carson Drive.

Prior to working with the Ohio Arts Council, where she oversees four grant programs as well as many other projects, Eckstrand was the arts director and director of cultural programs at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va. (1986-1994), and the executive director of the performing arts center at Clark State Community College in Springfield, Ohio (1994-2005). She has been the president of both the Ohio Arts Presenters Network and the West Virginia Arts Presenters and served on the boards and in other capacities for numerous national, state and local organizations.

Her husband, Edward Weisenbach, is a retired educator and technology director who is also a bluegrass musician in the Muleskinner Band.

Lexington Philharmonic music director Scott Terrell conducts a combined rehearsal of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras' symphony orchestra and the Philharmonic Oct. 19. CKYO director Kayoko Dan stands at the back of the orchestra, in a black blouse. Photos by Matt Goins.

When I moved to Lexington in 1998, one thing that immediately struck me about the ­local arts scene was the prominence of children and organizations geared toward children.

The Lexington Children’s Theatre’s shows rated the same sort of attention as productions at Actors Guild of Lexington and other area stages.

The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras’ events and personnel moves were prominent news. There were two institutions - the Explorium (then, the Lexington Children’s Museum) and the Living Arts and Science Center - geared toward children’s arts, particularly visual arts.

The School for Creative and Performing Arts had a prominent place in town, but there were stage, art and music programs at other schools also producing talented graduates who went on to arts careers.

Children’s Health magazine recently ranked Lexington No. 6 on its list of the 100 best places to raise a family. The criteria included crime and safety, education, economics, housing, cultural attractions and health.

I’d be willing to bet that if someone wanted to rank best places to be an artsy kid, Lexington would rate high on that list, too. By virtue of what is offered, we tell our children that the arts are something to do and be respected for doing.

Students Madelyn Nelson, left, Sara Arthur-Paratley, and Mary Rollins-Mathews rehearsed with the Lexington Ballet on Monday in preparation for Youth Arts Day.

The Lexington Philharmonic, the Horse Capitol of the World’s flagship arts organization, will celebrate young artists with its Youth Arts Day family concert at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Singletary Center for the Arts. It will include young singers from SCAPA, Fayette County Public Schools and the School of the Lexington Ballet.

The prominence of youth-oriented groups here is quite a bit more than other communities that I have lived in or observed. Over the nearly 12 years since I arrived, it has become clear that a big reason for that is quality.

Take the Children’s Theatre: In a town that has struggled with the concept of professional theater for adults, the Lexington Children’s Theatre has established itself with its own building on Short Street and a professional staff, including actors. What’s more, Larry and Vivian Snipes have developed a national reputation for the theater by being a venue that presents and creates new work. And the primary beneficiaries are kids.

And it really wasn’t terribly surprising that when the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras went looking for a new music director at the same time that the Lexington Philharmonic was trying to fill a similar job, it ended up attracting and hiring Kayoko Dan, also a candidate for the Philharmonic post.

CKYO has graduated numerous professional musicians, including Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Nathan Cole and hard-to-categorize cello soloist Ben Sollee.

Outside of groups directly geared toward kids, Lexington arts groups have been generous to kids.
Look at Paragon Music Theatre, which routinely loads the stage with kids, including Hello Dolly! this weekend, and even makes a place for them in its cabaret shows.

During years without a professional company, the Lexington Ballet featured its students in productions, and it and Kentucky Ballet Theatre, which has always had a pro troupe, always find ways to present students. Former Ballet Theatre dancer Adalhi Aranda Corn saw such value in Central Kentucky’s young artists she left and formed Bluegrass Youth Ballet and eventually built CulturArte, an arts facility that acommodates a variety of disciplines.

Possibly one of the biggest statements about valuing student artists was when the Lexington Singers’ ­Children’s Chorus was invited to perform in the Our Lincoln performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington in February.

And now LexArts has formed a Youth Arts Council to help focus young artists in the area.

Clarinetists Andrew Burton, 14, left, of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras and Mike Acord of the Philharmonic rehearsed together Monday.

Full disclosure: My children have participated in some of these groups, and one is in the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, although not the ensemble performing Sunday with the Lexington Philharmonic.

In addition, I’ve gotten to know many other kids who participate in groups. Maybe the most important thing these groups engender is enthusiasm for the arts they are participating in. I hear spirited discussions about play rehearsal and genuine interest in Bach sonatas.

Like anything, Lexington’s youth arts scene isn’t perfect. I remain baffled, for instance, why SCAPA does not have a theater of its own. Then again, SCAPA regularly solves that problem by putting its kids on stages usually graced by adults and pros.

It occurred to me as I left a CKYO rehearsal last week with my daughter that by virtue of her participation in the orchestra, she’s on the University of Kentucky campus every week. Most of us didn’t get used to being on a college campus until we had enrolled.

That’s just one of many ways that through our youth arts, regardless of whether the students pursue arts careers, by supporting such substantial programs, we’re preparing our kids for the rest of their lives.

William Watts, director of the Library Foundation, stands on the stage of the 144-seat library theater. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Doug Tattershall walks to the back of the control booth in the theater at the ­Lexington Public Library downtown, opens the door on a cabinet and rolls out an extra-special item: a record player.

And not just a turntable, but a changer ready for stacks of wax.

It sits right below an analog radio tuner.

Yes, this theater could use some updating.

“Everything is over 20 years old,” Tattershall says.

The antiquated equipment in the control room of the library theater includes a vinyl record player and analog radio tuner.

Lexington Public Library Foundation director William Watts says, “We were told that we couldn’t even get parts anymore for a lot of this ­equipment.”

Thanks to a $268,644 ­challenge grant from the W. Paul and Lucille Caudill Little Foundation, help could be on the way. If the challenge is met by July, $100,000 of the more than $537,000 will go into an endowment to ­maintain the five-story Foucault ­pendulum clock that Lucille Little ­donated to the library in 2001, and the remainder will be used for theater renovations.

“This is a very worthwhile program,” Watts says. “The Little Foundation is very ­interested in arts and the ­theater. They had funded the clock and wanted to protect that investment. We talked to them about how they could also help the theater.”

The library theater is not a major area venue, but it has hosted numerous groups and events, ­including productions by the Jazz Arts Foundation, ­the Apprentice ­Players, ActOut, the now-defunct Phoenix Group ­Theatre, the One World Film Festival and countless political debates.

It can be a boon for some groups; not-for-profit entities may use the theater for free.

Paying for space can be a huge issue for small artists and groups.

Renovations will go well beyond the outdated ­control room.

Backstage, the dressing rooms are being used for storage. The movie screen sits far back on the stage, away from the audience, and the lighting is far from state-of-the-art.

The renovation plan calls for staggering the seating, which now is in ­regimented rows that would make a military officer proud but isn’t great if you are trying to see around the person in front of you on the fairly flat theater floor.

“Sight lines are ­certainly a problem because this ­theater does not have ­staggered seating,” Janet Scott, a Lexington actor who has produced plays in the theater, says in a fund-raising video.

Annette Mayer, ­chairwoman of the One World Film Festival, says, “We would love to have a ­situation where everybody could see the screen.”

David McWhorter, ­president of the Jazz Arts Foundation, says the ­theater’s harsh lighting makes it difficult to produce video of the group’s monthly concerts.

And everyone in the fund-raising video ­emphasize the library’s central ­location: So many people are library ­patrons and know where it is.

Now, they just need to get the theater out of the vinyl era.

Quest Community Church's new state-of-the-art 2,400-seat auditorium was built with private funds. Could Lexington arts supporters do something similar?

What do you think of Lexington’s inventory of theaters and other venues for live performances?

Currently, leaving aside our behemoth of Rupp Arena, our major arts and entertainment venues are the Singletary Center for the Arts, which seats about 1,500, and the Lexington Opera House, which accomodates just under 1,000. Then, in the seats-a-few-hundred category, you have the black box theater in the Downtown Arts Center, the Lyric Theatre, which is currently being rennovated, and the Kentucky Theatre. There are also venues such as Studio Players’ Carriage House Theatre and the Lexington Children’s Theatre that are almost exclusively used by the groups that occupy them, and University spaces such as the University of Kentucky’s Guignol Theatre and Transylvania University’s Haggin Auditorium that are primarily used by the institutions.

Am I leaving any Big Kahunas out?

So, is that a good inventory. What do we lack?

Some lament we never got the major performing arts center that was supposed to happen where the courthouses now stand at Main and Limestone. Others say Lexington isn’t ready for a venue of that caliber. Others look at smaller spaces such as the Woodford Theatre’s venue in Falling Springs Arts and Recreation Center and wonder why Lexington couldn’t have something like that for groups that may see the Opera House as too big for their needs.

Still others say creativity trumps venues, and point to places such as Charleston, S.C., that have built vibrant performing arts scenes without an ideal inventory of venues. Here, we have examples such as Balagula Theatre at Natasha’s Bistro and Bar and the chamber music festivals that bookend the summer taking place in  an old tobacco barn at Shaker Village and Fasig-Tipton’s horse sales pavilion showing a creative use of non-traditional spaces in town.

Here’s another fly I’ll throw in the ointment: I just attended a concert last week in a new, state of the art 2,400-seat Lexington venue that would have been the envy of many area arts groups: Quest Community Church’s new sanctuary. If there is a desire for a new theater or theaters in town, do you need to have public funds to build it, or can the arts community come together to make something happen like, oh, Quest or a little baseball park near Broadway and New Circle that was built with private funds.

That’s sort of a distillation of conversations and thoughts I’ve had over the last several years about Lexington’s theater space.

So, what do you think? Hit the comment button and let’s talk.

Lauren Tenney (left, front), Meredith Dunlevy (back, left), Megan Jacobs (right, front) and Ashley Wilcock (back, right) dance while cellist Peter Kucirko plays a sonata by J.S. Bach in a rehearsal of a new piece which will be performed as part of the company's season-opening concert, Sept. 18. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

The Lexington Philharmonic and Lexington Ballet are teaming up to sell tickets to their season premieres for one price.

Scott Terrell. Photo by David Stephenson | LexGo.com.

Both the Ballet’s Sept. 17 and 18 Fabric of Dance performance and the Phil’s Sept. 25 MasterClassics concert are big debuts: the ballet unveiling its new professional performing company and the Phil’s new music director Scott Terrell opening his inaugural season with guest Evelyn Glennie, the most famous percussion soloist in the world.

The organizations are selling a combined ticket for $60. Individual tickets are $20-$35 for the ballet and $40-$100 for the Philharmonic. Call (859) 233-4226.

Walter May (standing), a Lexington-based Equity actor, played "Gone with the Wind" producer David O. Selznick and Eric Johnson played screenwriter Victor Fleming in "Moonlight and Magnolias" at Actors Guild of Lexington in April 2008. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Among the numerous questions Actors Guild of Lexington has to ask as it attempts to rebuild are: Does it want to be a professional theater? If so, what does that mean?

For years, Actors Guild has billed itself as Lexington’s professional theater for adult audiences. In recent years, it has been taking greater strides toward affiliating itself with Actors Equity, the stage actors union, by regularly booking Equity talent for its shows.

In May, the ­theater announced, among several other things, that it would be entering into a small professional theater contract with Equity.

Then, the bottom fell out.

A festering financial crisis was amplified in June, when LexArts decided not to give the AGL an allocation for general operating support - a contribution that had been around $70,000 in recent years - citing years of concerns about its fiscal management. In August, artistic director Richard St. Peter announced that he was leaving to pursue a doctorate in theater.

As the theater prepares to begin searching for a new artistic chief, it is going to work with a consultant and is holding a series of public meetings to get a feeling for what the arts community and the community in general want from the theater.

Lexington Children's Theatre, which presented "How I Became a Pirate" in April, is a professional theater, but it is not an Equity theater.

Reaching out is in part recognition that the theater has become estranged from parts of the theater community as its leadership, location and mission have changed over the years. But in conversations over the summer, ­”professional theater” has been a hot-button issue.

Some of this stems from how that goal was first pursued. When St. Peter ­arrived at Actors Guild, with a charge to make its a ­professional theater company, he brought in several ­Equity actors from out- of- town. That produced some successful performances, but it alienated a lot of local actors, who said they felt ­unwelcome at AGL and that parts were going to visitors, some of whom were no better than local talent.

More recently, ­Equity roles have gone to local actors who are Equity members including Leslie Beatty and Walter May, and Actors Guild has emphasized Equity affiliation as a way for local Equity talent to work and area actors who want to join Equity a path to earning their membership at home.

The problem is, if an actor becomes Equity, it limits the stages on which he or she can perform on, and if there’s only one Equity house in town, there could be months or years between roles.

Equity is not the only way to be professional, as Lexington Children’s Theatre proves. It is not an Equity theater but it does pay a staff of actors and other artists. In LCT, could there be a model for a professional theater for adult audiences?

Aside from the Equity question, AGL has billed itself as a professional theater though a lot of its artists also work at area community theaters. So, some have asked, what makes it professional, aside from a small stipend?

One commenter on the blog version of this column asked a few weeks ago, “Is a person professional for one show and then drop to amateur, only to recover and become professional again just a few months later? Lather, rinse, repeat?”

Then again, is professionalism the only way for Actors Guild to distinguish itself? Is it a goal the Lexington audience will sustain? Could AGL’s identity be in the type of productions it presents or the way it presents them? Does it have to be a flagship theater for the city? Can the Lexington audience sustain a pro theater?

They’re big questions for the theater to answer if it’s to focus on a successful future.

Richard St. Peter is no longer working as the artistic director of Actors Guild of Lexington.

Now-departed Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kim Shaw, who remains in her job, at Actors Guild's new Manchester Street offices. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Two weeks ago, St. Peter had announced he was resigning and would leave by the end of the forthcoming season to work on a doctorate in theater. But Friday afternoon, St. Peter said that the financial strain of working without pay and the prospect of being a lame-duck director prompted him to go ahead and leave the organization.

He also said he believed removing his approximately $45,000 annual salary from the theater’s financial picture might help it recover from a loss of funding from LexArts. In June, the united arts fund declined to give the theater an annual allocation for general operating funds, citing concerns about the theater’s ongoing financial difficulties.

“I’ve got kids, and I need to find work,” said St. Peter, who said he has only received one partial paycheck since July 1.

Actors Guild board president Jennifer Miller said two weeks ago that theater employees had been working without pay so the theater could concentrate on settling accounts with outside vendors and other creditors.

In addition to St. Peter’s departure, which St. Peter said the board approved Monday, Actors Guild also lost Bo List as the director of its season-opening production, Beguiled Again, a show based on the music of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. List said in an e-mail, “the agreed-upon terms of my employment were changed dramatically after I began my work in a manner that was unsatisfactory.”

List has been replaced by Stephen Currens, a Lexingtonian who enjoyed Off-Broadway success with Gorey Stories, a musical based on the illustrations of Edward Gorey. He appeared in last season’s AGL production of The Fantasticks.

Eric Ryan Seale.

Beguiled Again has been moved back to Sept. 24-Oct. 11, and AGL associate artistic director Eric Ryan Seale said he is looking at how the date change will affect the remainder of AGL’s season. Seale said that the original dates had been set to accommodate an out-of-town director who had to bow out before List took on the show, and that the date change was partially responsible for List having to bow out.

List said, “I hope that Beguiled Again is the success that AGL needs right now and my best wishes are with the company.”

St. Peter is scheduled to direct Actors Guild’s second production, David Hare’s The Vertical Hour, and he said he still plans to do that.

St. Peter’s departure leaves Seale and AGL managing director Kim Shaw running the company. Despite the challenging nature of the theater, both said they were upbeat.

“Everybody has been picking up the slack,” Shaw said Friday afternoon. “Our first priority is to get Beguiled Again up.”

Seale said, “This is probably going to sound crazy, but I feel pretty good. I’m used to the catastrophe curve of theater, and I have a new office here on Manchester Street, and I like coming in to work every day.

“If people are willing to bear with this initial season postponement and any other season adjustments, we’re going to be fine.”

The Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority has approved an application for film incentives by Fast Track Productions for Secretariat, Tuesday.

Jockey Ron Turcotte rides Secretariat to win the Belmont Stakes and capture the triple crown in this June 9, 1973. AP Photo.

That makes the story of the 1973 Triple Crown winner the first film to receive incentives under the new package approved by the General Assembly in June.

According to the application, Fast Track, a subsidiary of Disney Studios, estimates it will spend $4 million in Kentucky, making it eligible for up to $800,000 in tax credits. The bill extended a 20 percent credit on approved expenditures to feature films that spend more than $500,000 in the state. There were also provisions for other types of films and Broadway shows that are produced in Kentucky.

“This is a great way to kick off Kentucky’s new film incentive package,” Gov. Steve Beshear said in a news release. “I think it’s appropriate that a state known for thoroughbred racing be a part of a film about one of the most well-known horses in racing history.”

Leonard Lusky, president of Secretariat.com, said last week that incentives were a key to getting filmmakers to shoot part of the movie in Kentucky. In the past decade, tax incentives have increasingly become a key to luring film productions to shoot on location.

Secretariat, which will tell the story of the 1973 Triple Crown winner and his owner, Penny Chenery, is expected to begin filming in late September. Locations and details have yet to be announced. Diane Lane will star as Chenery and the film will be directed by Randall Wallace.

Since we ran a story yesterday citing the current renovation project at Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts, which will be unveiled early this fall, it seemed like a good time to show a few other pictures we caught down in Danville that did not run with the story.

George Foreman, director of the Norton Center for the Arts, stands in the center of seatless Newlin Hall. The new seating will be more curved and comfortable for patrons. The crane, on stage, is for painters brightening up the theater interior. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

The lobby of the Norton Center is something of a staging area for construction. The wall to the women's rest room was built out to double the number of facilities.

Without ceiling tiles in place, you can see the top of the old lobby wall to the women's rest room that now fall's inside the expanded ladies facilities in the Norton Center for the Arts.

Charlie Snowden (standing) and Tim Abbott of Cincinnati-based Midwest Accessibilty work on the new elevator in the Norton Center that will help the theater comply with requirements in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Wes Chaffin, Karen Sherwood, Angie Young, Dana Bart and Deborah Hoskins have a laugh as the put together season brochures for the Norton Center for the Arts 2009-10 season.

The nearly completed Weisiger Theatre offers a preview of what Newlin Hall will look like when it is done. Photo courtesy of the Norton Center for the Arts.

Over the weekend we found out that Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter will be leaving at the end of this season, at the latest, to pursue a doctorate degree in theater.

Richard St. Peter rehearsing his 2007 production of Hamlet. Photo by Angela Baldridge | LexGo.com.

AGL board chair Jennifer Miller said the theater would not be in a rush to name a successor, as the theater has other immediate issues to deal with and initiatives to embark on such as working with a consultant to help right the theater’s financial ship and point it in the right direction.

But, just like when the Cats make a coaching change, you mention a theater is changing its artistic chief, and interested parties cannot help thinking about who or what type of person that next director may be?

The last time AGL made a change at the top, the theater took the unprecedented step of conducting a nationwide search, which resulted in St. Peter’s hire. Should it do the same thing this time, or maybe look for a more familiar face to area theater fans and practitioners? Late in the spring, Actors Guild announced plans to expand its offerings and become a more professional theater by signing a small professional theater contact with Actors Equity. Good moves, or maybe over-reaching?

I want to hear what you think. Actors Guild of Lexington is undeniably a theater at a crossroads. What directions do you think it should steer into?

Hit the comment button, below, and let’s talk about it.