Copious Notes

Timothy Hull, seen here with Allie Darden in the On the Verge production of "Another Part of the Forest" in May, will star as the Elf in Actors Guild of Lexington's production of "The SantaLand Diaries." Photo by Rich Copley.

Yes, Kentucky, there will be a Christmas production by Actors Guild of Lexington.

The troubled theater’s next show will be a site-specific staging of David Sedaris’ The SantaLand Diaries at the site of the former Portabella Restaurant on Locust Hill Drive. It will run Dec. 10 to 20.

The show comes in the wake of a stormy summer and uncertain fall for the theater, whose funding from LexArts was eliminated and whose top two directors resigned. LexArts cut the funding, which had been about $70,000 in recent years, saying it had concerns about the fiscal management and overall viability of the theater, Lexington’s only semi-professional stage troupe for adults.

The SantaLand Diaries is Actors Guild’s first production since Beguiled Again, a Rodgers and Hart musical revue that had a two-weekend run at the Downtown Arts Center in early fall. The season schedule that Actors Guild announced last spring was to include David Hare’s The Vertical Hour and, for the holidays, a one-man version of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Associate artistic director Eric Seale, currently the theater’s only paid staff member, said SantaLand is a signal that AGL will continue presenting shows.

“If people are wondering, ‘Is there an AGL?,’ Yes, there’s an AGL,” Seale said. “If they are wondering, ‘Are they putting on shows?,’ Yes, we’re putting on shows.”

He said the theater is not ready to announce any productions after SantaLand.

A site-specific production is staged in a venue that relates to the subject matter. It’s not a new concept and has been popular in Lexington in the past year. On the Verge Productions presented Lillian Hellman’s family dramas The Little Foxes and Another Part of the Forest in historic homes downtown.

SantaLand, a one-person show about a man who plays an elf in the Christmas display at Macy’s, will be presented in the vacant retail space formerly occupied by Portabella, next to the Kroger at Richmond Road and Man o’ War Boulevard.

It will star Tim Hull, an emerging Lexington actor who recently was in Another Part of the Forest. Co-directors will be Seale and Leif Erickson Rigney, an actor last seen in Studio Players’ production of The Unexpected Guest.

AGL previously staged SantaLand in 2004 at the Downtown Arts Center.

Seale said the site-specific nature of this fall’s production was an aesthetic decision inspired by ideas he had heard at theater conferences. He said AGL explored several retail-space options before settling on the old Portabella location.

The play, based on Sedaris’ 1992 essay, looks at how people try to find holiday happiness in retail experiences, including visiting a department-store Santa. Seale said the Portabella site will be done up like a mall-Santa display to make the show “an experience.”

Seale said he expects tickets to go on sale early next week through Actors Guild’s Web site, www.actorsguildoflexington.org, or by calling 1-866-811-4111.

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.

The managing director of Actors Guild of Lexington, Kimberly Shaw, is leaving the theater to become the stage manager of a production that will tour Europe through 2010.

Kimberly Shaw. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Her departure leaves the embattled troupe with its top two management posts vacant and only one full-time employee remaining.

Although her departure comes at the end of a summer that saw the theater tumble into financial turmoil, the Lexington native says her resignation is not because of Actors Guild’s troubles.

“I had a meeting with the board’s executive committee Friday afternoon that was very productive and we were excited about some of the plans we were making,” said Shaw, who came to the theater in Sept. 2008 and had previously worked for the theater at Princeton University, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the New York International Fringe festival. “Then, out of the blue, I got this offer and it was personally and financially hard to turn down.”

Shaw said she is joining a show called India. It is a production of Franco Dragone Entertainment, which has produced shows such as Celine Dion in Las Vegas.

“It’s a sad loss for AGL,” said board president Jennifer Miller. “But I cannot say enough good things about Kim, and we could not possibly resent her for taking this amazing opportunity.”

With Shaw’s leaving and the departure of artistic director Richard St. Peter in August, Actors Guild now has only one full-time staffer left: associate artistic director Eric Ryan Seale.

Actors Guild produced a season-opening production — the Rodgers and Hart revue Beguiled Again, which closed earlier this month — but the theater has not announced any further productions.

Miller said the theater will be making some announcements about its future, including upcoming productions, soon.

Shaw said she is confident “the theater is poised to make it.

“The board is ready to answer the tough questions. It’s been a rough summer for AGL, but through that process, people have come on board and the staff is committed to work.”

Jack Parrish (right) discusses a scene with actor Walter May during rehearsals for Actors Guild of Lexington's 2004 production of Yasmina Reza's "Art." Herald-Leader file photo by David Stephenson.

Click here to sign an online guest book for Mr. Parrish.

Jack Parrish, a mostly Richmond, Va.-based actor and director who spent the last few years of his life enriching the Central Kentucky theater scene, died Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.

Mr. Parrish was born in Richmond and got into theater while he was in high school. His theater and film career included the roles of Brad Garrick on Another World and Brian Collier on All My Children, as well as stage work in New York and regional stages around the country, reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In 2004, Actors Guild of Lexington’s then-new artistic director Richard St. Peter hired Mr. Parrish to direct the first production under his watch: Yasmina Reza’s play Art.

Mr. Parrish eventually moved to Central Kentucky, where he directed the drama department at Kentucky State University in Frankfort and continued to be active in area theater.

“Watching him act was like watching a master class in the craft,” said Tim X. Davis, Mr. Parrish’s predecessor at KSU and one of the actors in that 2004 production of Art. “I was proud to have Jack take my place at Kentucky State and continue to improve upon the program we had built there. His colleagues and students from KSU, many of whom I’m still in contact with, have nothing but the most positive things to say about him and his work. His work onstage here in Lexington, brief though it was, was simply stunning.”

Mr. Parrish’s roles in Lexington included Polonius and the Gravedigger in Actors Guild’s 2007 production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He was set to take center stage as Falstaff in Actors Guild’s summer 2008 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor for Shakespeare at Equus Run but had to bow out because of his cancer treatments.

“It breaks my heart that the community never got to see his Falstaff … as it would have blown people out of their seats,” said Davis, who now directs the theater and film program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College.

Mr. Parrish eventually returned to Richmond with his wife, Kathy Ann Parrish. He was in hospice care when he died.

“I feel like I have lost a family member and one of my best friends all rolled into one,” said St. Peter, who resigned his post at Actors Guild in August. “He was an extraordinary actor, a brilliant interpreter of Shakespeare, a terrific director and a true ‘man of the theater.’”

Six veteran Lexington musical theater performers team up with director Stephen Currens for Beguiled Again, a musical revue of the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It plays Sept. 24-Oct. 4 at the Downtown Arts Center. We caught up with the cast at a rehearsal Sept. 22. The lights and set weren’t quite together, but we got a good idea what it’s going to look like.

Asia (Samantha Johnson), Sadie (Sylvia Howard) and Nella (Cathy Rawlings) are overjoyed to see their quilts hung in a major museum in "Gee's Bend." Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Deb Shoss was excited about Gee’s Bend, a play about the legendary quilters of rural Alabama. But Cathy Rawlings was skeptical to the point of indifference.

“I thought, ‘I don’t want to do a play about a bunch of little old ladies quilting,’” says Rawlings, a Lexington actress and founder of Agape Theatre Troupe.

Shoss, who had previously directed Rawlings in plays for Agape Theatre Troupe and Actors Guild of Lexington, agrees. “I wouldn’t have come out of my house for that,” she says.

But “little old ladies quilting” is far from a fair description of Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s Gee’s Bend, as Rawlings soon found out.

Young Sadie (Sylvia Howard) is about to be baptized by the preacher (Rev. Willis G. Polk) at the beginning of "Gee's Bend."

The group’s quilts, now considered masterpieces of modern art, frame a struggle for survival and perseverance by the women of the town of Gee’s Bend, who, like African-American people everywhere in early and mid-20th-century America, had to endure pervasive and institutional racism.

The story of the 2007 play, which has one performance by Agape Theatre Troupe at the Lexington Opera House on Sunday, focuses on some of the women of Gee’s Bend, from their childhoods to realizing dreams too wild for their imaginations.

“They made these quilts to keep them warm,” Shoss says. “And then, when they got too raggedy, they’d use them as mops, and when they were too raggedy for mops, they’d burn them to smoke out mosquitoes.”

Rawlings says what ultimately drew her into the story were the women and their struggles to overcome society and, in some cases, their own husbands.

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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.

. . . to tell it what you want from local theater.

Actors Guild of Lexington has undertaken a set of public meetings to get input from members of the arts  community and the community in general as it moves forward from several crises.

Kimberly Shaw is the managing director of Actors Guild of Lexington. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

The meetings started Monday and will continue from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 2) in conference room B on the fourth floor of the Central Branch of the Lexington Public Library. The other two meetings are at 6-7:30 p.m. Sept. 8 and 10 at a location yet to be announced.

Each meeting will be attended by AGL managing director Kimberly Shaw, associate artistic director Eric Seale and board president Jennifer Miller. They are trying to limit the guests to 10 each meeting to give everyone a chance to talk and be heard. That’s probably a good idea as larger gatherings in the wakes of other theater crises the in the past decade or so have resulted in fairly pointless excercises. According to at least one account, the initial meeting on Monday night went well.

Actors Guild is in the midst of a turbulent time. In June, LexArts announced it would not extend the theater an allocation for general operating funds — a contribution that has been around $70,000 the past several years — and the theater was already struggling with a significant financial crisis. Then, in August, the theater’s artistic director, Richard St. Peter, announced he was leaving to pursue a doctorate in theater.

So, AGL is trying to dig out of a hole and start the search for a new AD. But, before getting too far down that road, the theater leadership wants to get a handle on how the community is feeling, hear what it wants out of one of Lexington’s leading theaters, and even get some ideas.

If you want to get in on a chat, contact Miller at jenniferbethmiller@insightbb.com. Miller has also said she and the staff are open to private conversations and meetings.

Meanwhile, St. Peter has started a blog. The stated purposed of the journal is to discuss the 127 plays he says he needs to read in pursuing his Ph.D. He seems to be a speedy reader and writer already on play 2: David Mamet’s Oleanna.

In his intro, he briefly discusses his experiences as, “Artistic Director of a small pseudo-professional theatre in a town that didn’t really want or need professional theatre.”

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.”

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.