Copious Notes

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.

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.”

Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kimberly Shaw photographed in May in the theater's new offices in the Distillery District. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Actors Guild of Lexington Artistic Director Richard St. Peter has told the theater’s board that he will be leaving by the end of the 2009-10 season to pursue a doctorate degree in theater.

St. Peter declined to say where he will be going to graduate school, as he has not finalized those plans with the school. He did say that his departure is not a reaction to Actors Guild’s recent financial troubles which came to a head in June when LexArts declined to grant the theater an allocation for general operating funds.

“I want to stress as much as I can that this is not a bad thing, not death or disaster,” St. Peter said Saturday night. “It’s just the next thing.”

St. Peter said he is not leaving immediately and expects to negotiate a departure time with the theater’s board, when a succession plan is in place.

Actors Guild board president Jennifer Miller said that St. Peter’s decision was of his own volition. She said she had been aware he was contemplating pursuing a doctorate, but was still surprised when he informed her of his plans this weekend.

She said the theater’s board has not had a chance to meet and discuss searching for a successor, but she expected it would be a little while before that effort starts.

“We don’t want to make rapid decisions, we want to make the right decisions,” Miller said.

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Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., will speak at ArtsPlace, 161 N. Mill St., at 4 p.m. Aug. 12. His appearance is part of the Kennedy Center’s Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative, which is looking at how the arts are responding the economic crisis in terms of fund raising, budgeting, marketing and board development.

Michael Kaiser.

“Each locality is dealing with its own unique and specific challenges, and there is no better way to understand each region than through in-person visits,” Kaiser said in a news release from LexArts, which is sponsoring the appearance along with Arts Kentucky and Actors Theatre of Louisville. “Communicating in person allows us to be more effective in advising organizations in need.”

Kaiser is visiting all 50 States as part of the initiative, in an effort to spark conversation and consult with arts leaders across the country. He will speak in Louisville Wednesday morning and then come to Lexington. The ArtsPlace visit will start with a meet-and-greet at 3:30. The event is free. To register, visit ArtsKy.org.

LexArts has agreed to give Actors Guild of Lexington a $7,500 matching grant to hire an organizational consultant to help the theater navigate out of its financial troubles.

In June, the LexArts allocations committee decided not to give Actors Guild a general operating support grant from its 2009 Campaign for the Arts. The theater, which produces shows in the Downtown Arts Center on Main Street, has traditionally received funds from the campaign, which in part gives operational support to groups such as the Lexington Philharmonic and the Lexington Art League. Actors Guild’s allocation request for this year was $70,900, in line with previous requests.

In denying the request, and a subsequent appeal in July, LexArts said it was concerned about the theater’s financial management and troubles that dated back to 2005.

The matching grant came after a meeting between LexArts and Actors Guild leaders.

Granting the consultant funds, LexArts President and CEO Jim CLark said in a news release that, ”AGL now has an arts management professional leading the staff and board members focusing on financial progress as much as on AGL’s artistic and outreach mission.  Working with an independent consultant, AGL can confront a difficult challenge to emerge as a stronger organization with a larger community presence.”

AGL’s managing director Kimberly Shaw said, “In the last few years, AGL has expanded its public service programs and earned regional and national attention for its rising artistic excellence.  We are now on the road to having business practices of the same high professional quality.  AGL’s artists, audience members, donors, trustees and staff will all greatly appreciate that LexArts intends to join us on this journey.”

In the past, LexArts has helped groups such as the Lexington Children’s Theatre and Lexington Art League hire consultants when it had concerns about their business practices. Both groups still receive allocations from the campaign.

Earlier this month, Actors Guild did receive a $15,839 Arts Partnership Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council. Council executive director Lori Meadows said the state organization’s grants are independent of local groups — it also gave LexArts a $32,598 grant — with different criteria. She said the KAC review panel did not have the same concerns LexArts had about Actors Guild.

Some people may have looked at today’s Opinions | Ideas section of the Herald-Leader and thought it was a bad morning for the arts, and the Lexington Philharmonic in particular. The Sunday letters to the editor devoted a section to six letters about Fourth of July activities, three complaining that the Lexington Philharmonic’s patriotic concert on July 3rd was not patriotic enough.

Scott Terrell's Philharmonic debut got mixed reviews, but it was good to see passionate debate about the arts. Photo by Mark Cornelision | Herald-Leader.

The concert also happened to be Scott Terrell’s debut conducting the orchestra since being named its music director in April.

“Abandoning old favorites like Battle Hymn of the Republic, 1812 Overture and God Bless America, Terrell chose to include selections like Mission Impossible,” Lindy Karns of Lexington wrote. “There are an insufficient number of opportunities to listen to the performance of songs that make us proud to be Americans.”

Listening to the concert, I wondered if there would be people that found it lacking in patriotic anthems that we so commonly associate with the Fourth of July, and even thought some Broadway tunes such as, say, America from West Side Story — which I saw performed by the Broadway revival cast on NBC’s Fourth celebration — or selections from The Music Man might have gone over better than My Fair Lady and Chicago.

But I also saw the point that we as Americans should be proud that our country has produced original art forms such as musical theater and movie music and given the world classic composers such as Lerner and Loewe and Henry Mancini.

We often cede classical music to Europeans, ignoring great American composers such as Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and others. I liked that Terrell included John Williams’ Olympic music, highlighting another great American talent too often written off as just a film composer, and his inclusion of Leroy Anderson, an American composer championed by Terrell’s predecessor, George Zack.

But the broader point is that I loved seeing four letters to the editor — one from Kevin C. Brown of Lexington praised the program saying Terrell, “managed to breathe new life into the traditional program”  — about a concert, from relatively informed people debating the merits of the program with obvious passion.

It’s also something we’ve seen lately in comments and some letters to the editor about LexArts’ decision not to fund Actors Guild of Lexington for the next fiscal year.

I think I sometimes surprise people who call or write to complain about a story I’ve written when I invite them to write a letter to the editor. No, it is never fun to read someone complaining about you. But I love it when people take time to sit down and write about the arts. It says this is important stuff, and it is worth the time to express an opinion, even if it happens to be critical. Hey, by taking the time to criticize, you are saying, I think this can be better, and it is important to me to weigh in on it.

It can’t all be politics and UK sports, people.

And really, in this increasingly interactive world, it is more important than ever that people pipe up and show the arts are something we consider worthy of debate and comment.

So, keep those cards and letters and emails and comments coming. It’s all good.

The past few weeks have brought about some interesting Lexington arts headlines.

Lexington Ballet artistic director Luis Dominguez at work on a production of his original ballet, Cabbage Moon. Herald-Leader file photo.

Lexington Ballet hires executive director: The Lexington Ballet reached, ­almost literally, across the fourth-floor lobby of ArtsPlace to hire the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra’s education director, Joe Tackett, as chief business officer.

The ballet’s board president, Michael Potapov, said, “Over the past several years, the board has worked to position the organization to once again become a pillar of the cultural landscape in Lexington.”

The ballet begins auditioning for a new professional company this week.

LexArts cuts Actors Guild’s funding: After what LexArts says has been several years of trying to work through financial travails with Actors Guild of Lexington, the united arts fund’s allocations committee cut off funding for Lexington’s only semi-professional theater for adults.

AGL had requested a $70,900 allocation from this year’s Campaign for the Arts, a figure comparable to the theater’s allocations in recent years. Actors Guild has appealed the de-funding.

That Actors Guild and the Lexington Ballet almost simultaneously made arts news in Lexington is familiar.

In spring 1998, a six-figure financial meltdown devastated the Lexington Ballet, which until then had been one of Lexington’s leading cultural institutions. In 1997, it received more than $80,000 in the Campaign for the Arts from what was then the Lexington Arts and Cultural Council.

Less than two weeks later, revelation of a $20,000 financial shortfall prompted the Actors Guild board to fire all three members of its management team.

Both groups ended up initially shut out of funding from the Campaign for the Arts.

But from there, the paths diverged.

Shortly after its house-cleaning, Actors Guild hired Deb Shoss as its new producing director, and she quickly brought the troupe back into the council’s good graces. When Shoss retired in 2002, then-LACC director Dee Fizdale said, “The LACC got behind the organization because it came to us with a solid plan that it carried out.”

The Lexington Ballet? Not so much, as far as the LACC was concerned.

The ballet’s management chafed at moves to monitor its attempts to recover. Officials had a stormy relationship with a consultant hired with support from LACC, and they vehemently opposed suggestions to merge Lexington Ballet with Kentucky Ballet Theatre, which was formed by dancers and the assistant director who were fired from the Lexington Ballet.

Actors Guild and Lexington Ballet are both still in business, but the dance group has never resumed receiving allocations from the LACC, which is now LexArts.

Nothing is black and white. Lexington Ballet did have successes in the ensuing years, and Actors Guild has had problems.

But the recent headlines show how much things can change over time.

The none-too-subtle subtext of ballet board president Potapov’s statement about the troupe’s latest move: We want to return to our former glory.

LexArts president and chief executive Jim Clark says the ballet has a way to go before it will be considered for allocations again, but that under the leadership of artistic director Luis Dominguez, the ballet has made strides in programming and presenting guest artists, including a collaboration with Dance Theatre of Harlem this spring.

The addition of a business leader and a professional company, reportedly comprising four dancers, could build on that.

Actors Guild also has shown ambition recently. It just wrapped up its season with one of its biggest hits: The world-premiere production of Kentucky author Silas House’s play Long Time Traveling. And the theater has moved its offices into the burgeoning Distillery District and announced plans to create a second stage series and a cabaret series and to enter into an agreement with ­Actors Equity, the stage actors union. All of these moves have been cited as revenue-generating initiatives.

But all that was before the LexArts allocations committee’s patience with Actors Guild’s financial travails seemed to come to an end.

Actors Guild is appealing the decision. And even if it does not get the LexArts funds, leaders say the theater can continue, although after losing $70,000, it’s hard to imagine that it would be the same type of organization.

And hiring new people in the front office and for the stage at the ballet is no guarantee of success.

But for now, 11 years after some of the most tumultuous days in Lexington arts, the toe shoes seem to be on different feet.

Leslie Beatty in

Despite LexArts recent cut of Actors Guild of Lexington’s funding and the pending appeal of that decision, the theater’s summer shows are going on at the Downtown Arts Center.

Last weekend’s performances of the encore production of Bad Dates were cancelled due to low ticket sales, but Leslie Beatty’s performance of Theresa Rebeck’s one-woman show is scheduled to happen at 7:30 p.m. tonight through Saturday. The well-reviewed production was one of two shows, Silas House’s Long Time Traveling being the other, that helped Actors Guild end the year on a positive note.

And at 8 p.m. July 10-18, Actors Guild will present Eric Bogosian’s subUrbia in conjunction with Apprentice Players. Apprentice Players are the group of high school and college actors who have staged recent productions such as Dog Sees God and last summer’s The History Boys. We’ll have more on subUrbia as the show draws closer.