By NATE KING
Salina Post
Performances at Theatre Salina are drawing more people from outside Saline County than ever before. The organization is also in early concept development stages for building a new stage shop at their campus on E. Iron Avenue in Salina. That's the word from Theatre Salina Executive Director Michael Spicer during an exclusive interview with Salina Post earlier this month.
"The scope of what the theater does now is broader than it has ever been," Spicer said.
Nomadic beginnings
The Salina Community Theatre Association was first organized in 1960. At the time there was no building dedicated to the theatre or to the members of the community who supported local theatre.
"The organization moved around to different places, even out to Indian Rock Park in the summer, sometimes, at the Washington High School building," Spicer said.
By 1968, the theatre board realized that it needed its own building. The Theatre raised $213,000 for construction and equipment.
"In 1972, when the Kephart Theatre was built, which was a seminal moment in our organization," Spicer said. "When you have a home where people can find you, and you're consistently there, you begin to build a production motif that makes sense for you."
"The Addams Family" marked the 350th subscription production for Theatre Salina.
"That is just main-stage performances, that doesn't even count the Center for Theatre Arts performances," Spicer said. "When we counted all shows, including CTA, there were 582 lines on the excel spreadsheet."
Spicer arrived at Theatre Salina in 1997 making this year his 26th season with the theatre. The measurability of dollars spent on tickets each year was not readily known when Spicer first arrived.
"In 1997, when I got here, we just didn't have the statistics. But when we began gathering them more than a decade ago, we were at about 30 percent of ticket sales came from outside Saline County. After about a decade of being here, we had grown that to 40 percent," said Spicer.
That trend in outside dollars coming in is continuing. According to Spicer in the two most recent musicals, Kinky Boots and The Addams Family, nearly half of every dollar spent on ticket sales came from outside Saline County.
The continued growth in regional sales comes on the heels of the theatre changing its name from Salina Community Theatre to Theatre Salina. The name change, which took place earlier this year, was years in the making and was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After theatre board members held roundtable discussions with patrons, community members, and business leaders, the board decided to change the name in order to accurately present their motif to visitors and tourists who might have a preconceived notion when they hear the words "community theatre."
"One of the most common conversations I have is that when our patrons and longtime volunteers bring people in from outside the area to see shows here, one of the most regular comments is 'this doesn't feel or look like a community theater,'" Spicer said. "And when they see the productions, 'The Play that Goes Wrong,' 'Kinky Boots,' and 'Addams Family,' their notion of what community theater is, becomes expanded."
Center for Theatre Arts
Theatre Salina has supported children’s programming since its beginning, bringing in a variety of traveling productions for young people. Salina Theatre for Young People (STYP) was the first incarnation of a structured children’s program. Over the years, the program’s name has been updated to Center for Theatre Arts (CTA). Classes available to students have expanded to include theatre classes, vocal, music theatre and dance classes for all ages. According to a CTA brochure, it is the only performing arts academy between Topeka and Denver.
In 2011, the theater was expanded to meet the needs of CTA’s growing roster of students.
“When we built this building, we hoped we would grow registration from 50 to maybe 150 student registrations a year. Well, we've been consistently at 350 student registrations for several years now,” Spicer said.
The COVID-19 pandemic did impact day to day life at the theatre including the wearing of masks on stage and increased social distancing measures for cast and crew. However, student enrollment at CTA was not greatly impacted.
“Our enrollment did drop down a little bit during COVID, but only down to about 275. This year we have 353 student registrations,” Spicer said.
Broadening horizons with theatre education
Salina has a variety of extracurricular sports teams for young people to enjoy, but Spicer spoke about the importance of theatre education in the lives of young people.
"The city has focused a lot on sports. I grew up playing football and doing gymnastics in high school. I know how they benefited me. I also know that I did theater in high school. And that benefited me too," said Spicer. "You have to look at your child and see what might expand their horizons some. I think that it is unimpeachable that taking theater classes, teaches you to communicate, it teaches you to collaborate, it teaches you to be creative, it teaches you to come up with solutions outside the box, often."
Maggie Spicer Brown, is the education director for Theatre Salina. Brown grew up in the Salina area, and was very active with Theatre Salina. She graduated from Salina South High School in 2010.
"Theatre Salina raised me, so I am very lucky to help be part of the formation of our education department that will in turn raise our current students to be the best versions of themselves," Brown said.
Brown was offered the position after Megan Coberly, former CTA education director, moved to New York City with her husband who currently works at Columbia University.
"The program was left to me in great form so I'm very fortunate that I get to continue to build upon that and grow it further," Brown said.
Brown received her Bachelor of Music degree from Oklahoma City University before moving to New York City, where she lived on and off for the better part of seven years. During that time, Brown worked as a professional actor with favorite credits including Mamma Mia and Matilda at Casa Manana in Texas, Freaky Friday and A Little Night Music at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma and the North American tour of The Wizard of Oz. Brown has also been able to choreograph many musicals at Theatre Salina, as well as pieces for the summer contemporary shows.
"Previously as a teacher, choreographer and director, I was a little more one on one with students, so my decisions shift into bigger picture ideas than just immediate preparations for rehearsals and class as before," Brown said. "I have really enjoyed it so far. Theatre education is so important, our students value the theatre as their safe space and home away from home and our teachers are passionate. That is what makes this job so easy to love."
Future builds and upcoming season at Theatre Salina
Spicer also told Salina Post that Theatre Salina has preliminary designs to build another series of studios and classrooms for education along E. Iron Street.
“What we're going to build is hopefully a new scene shop, two more dance studios, three vocal performance studios and a parent's lounge in some land along Iron Street. That means we've got to go to the city and ask them to give us some land in Founders Park,” he said.
The Theatre Salina campus is also in preliminary talks to build a new scene shop on their campus in Salina.
“We are in the very beginning stages of the next evolution of this campus. And it's being driven by our need for more storage area. We could build a storage facility and make it bigger than the current one we have and make it climate controlled and have security,” Spicer said. “But it wouldn't be with the best interest of the river project. As the walking path goes by, they don't want to have a storage building out there.”
The theatre looked at the cost of purchasing land, and building a remote storage facility off campus.
“When we counted what it would take and man hours and transportation to go back and forth between But to go several miles, takes our set manager, JR, out of the building and that takes him off of building which slows our process down,” Spicer said.
According to Spicer the best solution to their problem was to build a second, newer scene shop— and he knows exactly where they want it.
“Where it should have been built the first time, which is based on the theory of theater that James Hall Miller created, that Charles Shaver designed into this facility,” Spicer said. “The scene shop should have been built directly behind the stage house with two big doors, so that you can take scenery in a big circle.”
This project would also include a possible turntable built into the floor of the stage.
The turn table would allow us to move scenery. That would be an exciting possibility. And we are investigating now what the cost of that would be,” Spicer said.
The theatre also is looking to enhance its lighting features by installing a permanent LED wall on the upstage part of the stage. According to Spicer this will replace the need to project scenes onto a screen, providing audience members with an ancillary design element.
The theatre board is also looking at contracts for next season's shows which will be the 63rd season at Theatre Salina.
"This is this is always a lengthy process. This is the committee that meets probably more often and more regularly than most other committees. This one does it every couple of weeks for August through December, sometimes even January, February, depending on how long it takes for us to come up with the season that makes sense for us," Spicer said.
"We're doing four musicals this year, because we are re-engaging, our partnership with Kansas Wesleyan to do a fourth musical. And so the discussion is, next year do we do four non-musicals and three musicals? I think that we are going to do four musicals again next year for a number of reasons, some of which are artistic, and some of which are financial. But we're not sure what that's going to mean yet."
Upcoming shows at Theatre Salina include the following.
A Christmas Story: The Musical, Nov. 18- Dec. 3 and Dec. 16- Dec 18
A Doll's House Part 2, Jan. 6-22
The Savannah Sipping Society, Feb. 3-19
Something Rotten: The Musical, in partnership with Kansas Wesleyan, March 31-April 15
School of Rock: The Musical, June 9-25