Winston-Salem has a new professional theater company.
Festival Stage of Winston-Salem will begin presenting several plays each season in the Hanesbrands Theatre shortly after the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts officially opens in September. Hanesbrands Theatre is part of the center.
"We're certainly going to do our very, very best to make it as great a quality as possible at this early stage of Festival Stage's young life," said Pedro Silva, who will serve as Festival Stage's managing director and president.
Silva is also the managing and artistic director of the N.C. Shakespeare Festival of High Point, with which Festival Stage will share such resources as staff and facilities as part of an "affiliation."
Both the N.C. Shakespeare Festival and Winston-Salem will benefit from the arrangement. It will allow the Shakespeare Festival to hire more full-time staff, particularly in technical areas.
And Winston-Salem will gain theater performances featuring members of Actors' Equity Association union -- without having to invest thousands of dollars in such items as rehearsal space and shops to make sets and costumes. The Shakespeare Festival will provide those.
The first Festival Stage show, running Oct. 22 through Nov. 7, will be The Foreigner, a comedy by Larry Shue. This will be followed by Lunch at the Piccadilly, a new musical comedy by Clyde Edgerton and Mike Craver (Feb. 4-20), and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (May 13-29).
"It is exciting to be a part of this unique, regionally collaborative venture, which has immense potential for enhancing the cultural, educational and artistic life of our regional community," said Randy Eaddy, the chairman of Festival Stage's board and a member of N.C. Shakespeare Festival's board.
Festival Stage grew out of the two "Twin-City" seasons that N.C. Shakespeare presented in the Mountcastle Forum in the Sawtooth building, in 2007 and 2008. This happened before work began on transforming the Sawtooth building into the Milton Rhodes center. Also, the Shakespeare Festival presented A Christmas Carol annually in Winston-Salem from 1983 to 2006.
Silva said that Festival Stage will operate on a yearly budget of $725,000, with $275,000 of that expected to come from ticket sales and $300,000 from sponsorships and grants. He said that Festival Stage can count on $150,000 of "in-kind commitments" from the Shakespeare Festival.
Festival Stage has applied to the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County for an operational support grant of $60,000 -- which, if approved, will be used beginning Oct. 1, said Richard Emmett, the council's chief operating officer. The council has pushed for making professional theater a part of the center.
kkeuffel@wsjournal.com
727-7337
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