February 8, 2019 -- Volume VI, Issue 3

Virginia Rep’s Anything Goes Gala is our annual fundraiser, bringing in over $300,000 in support of operations. This year’s Gala was a blast, featuring rousing numbers from Sister Act, The Wiz, Atlantis, and Once, and honoring deVeaux Riddick with our 2019 VET Award. A highlight of the evening was Scott Saunders, a 24-year-old theatre lover who has been blind since infancy. When we say Scott loves theatre, we really need to put LOVES in all caps. He’s attended Broadway tours and RVA shows most of his life. But, as he’ll be the first to tell you, he’s never REALLY LOVED theatre until attending Virginia Rep’s Mary Poppins 14 months ago. Scott’s eyes were opened, so to speak, when he participated in our pre-show tactile tour, in which he experienced the cast, the set, and the props through his highly developed sense of touch. Then he listened on headset to the live audio description, detailing everything he couldn’t see. Since that mind-blowing experience, Scott has “seen” every production since. At the Gala, he shared his excitement and admiration in a moving speech that had everyone on the edge of their seats. Immediately following, Gala attendees donated an additional $54,550 in cash to Virginia Rep’s coffers. We can’t thank Scott enough. He is not only our Theatre Access for the Blind (TAB) program’s biggest fan; he’s now also responsible in large part for its financial sustainability.  

Through extensive research and development, our acclaimed Community Health and Wellness partnership (CHW) creates and tests innovative, science-based model projects (like TAB) that demonstrate how theatre can provide positive solutions to vital community concerns. FIELD (Family Involvement in Early Language Development)® is also a model project. FIELD seeks to use theatre as a tool to empower low socioeconomic status (SES) parents to create language-rich environments for their children birth through age 3. In the first two years of FIELD, it became clear that our most significant roadblock was access. Phoenecia Hill joined our CHW team last summer to create and sustain bridges to the community, helping to generate awareness, understanding and trust. Neci earned her BS in Mass Com from VCU, and her MPA in Nonprofit Management from Regent. Prior to joining our staff, Neci served as Executive Asst to Richmond’s Chief Admin Officer, Selena Cuffee-Glenn. With Virginia Rep, Neci is establishing new relationships with each of the Community Health Workers who staff the Housing Resource Centers in the Broad Rock, Creighton, Fairfield, Gilpin, Hillside, Mosby, Southwood, and Whitcomb communities. She also provides management support for our Theatre Access for the Blind (TAB) and Sensory Friendly programs. We’re grateful to have Neci on our team!

A request for Virginia Rep’s help was received this week from Hattie Winfield, Registered Nurse / Pediatrics, Fort Lee. Ms. Winfield has been assigned with the responsibility of educating the military students living on base about the health dangers associated with smoking and/or vaping. On March 21, she will be providing prevention training in four education centers to approximately 120 children from age 4 through 18. “I’ve been told that you are Virginia’s leading experts on creating and delivering compelling prevention programming for children and adolescents,” she began, “and I’d like you to help me keep Fort Lee’s children safe from smoking.” With a lead-in like that, how could we say “no.” Also this week, we met with Tim Gresham and Tom Shockley, President / CEO and Board member, respectively, of Conexus for Healthy Vision, a colleague nonprofit dedicated to the early identification and correction of vision impairment among Virginia’s children. They were eager to discuss our interest in and ability to create a play to encourage educational systems and parents to understand the importance of early diagnosis. After explaining what our CHW programs can and cannot achieve, we agreed to continue to discuss with them what may be future possibilities. We are very proud of the fact that our work in prevention is earning such prominent recognition.

In 2010 Strategic Planning, the leadership of Virginia Rep decided to take steps both forward and back. Forward energy was focused on two goals: we will increase our efforts in new play development and we will codify and strengthen our innovative Community Health and Wellness partnership (CHW). The look back prompted one goal: we will establish and operate Virginia’s first Theatre Museum (in coordination with the McAuley Kilgore Theatre Library and the theatre archives at the Library of Virginia). The Museum will be housed in what is almost undisputedly Virginia’s most historically significant theatre facility (our time-honored November). The mission of our Theatre Museum is to preserve, interpret, and share our historic home, and to collect, protect, and celebrate RVA’s theatre heritage. George Orwell stated, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their history.” Phil and Bruce met with City attorneys this week to try to maintain a key dispensation that enables the City’s only financial support of our historic preservation efforts. If YOU would like to help with our operation as a Theatre Museum, please check your files for any playbills or photos from our productions of James Joyce’s The Dead and/or The Loves of Cass McGuire. We sadly have discovered these two holes in our collection of print materials from shows gone by.  

Virginia Rep subscriber (AND Chesterfield Co Public Library supporter) Janet Jorgensen wrote, “More good news in an email from CCPL today. Virginia Rep’s production of I Have a Dream – The Life and Times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will be touring to the North Courthouse Road Library on Mon Feb 18. The performance begins at 6 PM.” Indeed it will, Janet, and all (age 10 through adult) are invited to attend. Directed by Scott Wichmann and written by Bruce Miller, Dream will be presented in the library free-of-charge, no reservations required. Subscriber and Virginia Rep traveler Nancy Wright wrote, “I’m so excited about Once. I remember when we did the Downton Abbey trip, having supper with Bruce and some other folks at the Newbury Theatre. We had just seen Once on London’s West End. Bruce was wondering if we had the musicians to pull off this great show in Virginia, and I said, ‘Of course we do. Just think of all those folks in Colonial Williamsburg.’ I was thinking specifically of Kelly Kennedy. I am SO HAPPY that it is all now coming to fruition, and that Kelly is in the cast!” Once opens TONIGHT, and among the Virginia musicians who will be raising the roof are the great Kelly Kennedy AND three other Virginia Rep stalwarts, Trevor Craft, Will Hart, and Lennon Hu. When Once closes in RVA, the entire adult cast will transfer to the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, PA.