Is high school theatre a community facility?

We attended a delightful concert recently featuring Nova Scotia artists Evans and Doherty, two of my favourite Irish singers. Whenever I’m at a concert like that I am the happiest I can be. As a former performer of Irish, Newfoundland and other folk music for almost all of my life, it just doesn’t get better for me.

Don’t get me wrong! I have a great appreciation for all kinds of music. It’s in my blood! When I was in grade three at the Lunenburg Academy, I was invited to become a student of renowned voice teacher Mrs.B.G. Oxner, and those daily lessons during the school year continued until I left the Academy to attend Rothesay Collegiate School for Boys in Rothesay, NB. There I continued my music studies under a teacher from South Africa, who came to Rothesay during the MauMau uprising.

I performed many times in churches in Lunenburg, and also enjoyed lead parts in Academy operettas, Mississippi Melody, The Skywayman, and Babes In Toyland. In Rothesay, I had the lead role in a Gilbert & Sullivan production called Pirates of Penzance. And then, after I was finished with school, I made an attempt to get hired on as a bar singer performing many, many folksongs. Folk music was in its heyday back then, and I tried to get recognized as a quality performer.

Well, my efforts fell flat, and I came to learn quite quickly that it took more than a decent voice to be a professional singer. I should have followed what some others I had known were doing, and that was getting a group together and getting some professional management. I didn’t do that, and thus my music career ended before it even began.

But I carried my love for the music I performed with me all my life. Once in awhile I’d get an opportunity to perform in a club, I was a regular every Friday on the TV show Supper Club with Bill Murray from Moncton, and I was selected to perform on the Armed Forces On The Air show during my stint in the RCAF, which was broadcast to Canadian Armed Forces bases all across the world.

Some of my most enjoyable performance opportunities occurred right here in Amherst, when a group of us, under the general leadership of one of my favourite entertainers, the late Ruth Cormier Nichols, along with performers like Men With Hats, Keith Thompson, Pat Melanson, Drimindown, Nancy Mooney, Wayne Landry, and others. We performed in the basement of the Catholic churches in Amherst, and the room was always filled with energetic audiences. Last Sunday with Evans & Doherty took me back to those church basement days, and I sang along with them to almost every song. Those opportunities don’t come around much anymore!

Evans & Doherty performed at the Community Credit Union Business Centre, and while it’s an OK venue for some things, it lacks considerably as a music performance facility. The theatre space at the High School, called the Susan Taylor Auditorium, is a great space for all sorts of performances, but is now so controlled by the school management people and so expensive to rent, that it is almost never used now. That facility was only built after the community raised the money to pay for it, but it is unaffordable to most performance efforts. That problem is complicated, but I will venture to express that if the community management group would create a schedule of payment for use of the facility that not only included flat rate payments, but also payments based on a percentage of ticket sales, it could become available to all groups who might want it. I performed in a beautiful theatre in Markham, Ontario, and that facility was not attached to the school, nor was it run by the school. It was used by the school, and sited next door to the school, but the school had to book the use of it, on a first come, first served, basis, just like everyone else. The school paid a pretty hefty fee for their annual use, and that helped immensely to keep the beautiful professional-quality facility in a good operating position. Like our theatre, it was all paid for when the doors opened, but the annual maintenance fees had to be raised ever year. We could do that here, I suspect. But in fact, that community owned facility should have been built next door to the school, and not within it. It should also have been built in such a way that the seating area could be made smaller or larger, depending on the need.

Well, that’s my rant for this week. That facility is what it is, and it is no longer a true community operated facility. Too bad!

Jerry Randall is a member of the Amherst News Community Editorial Panel.