growing pains

For the first ten years of our organization (or so)...we were called the "Danville-Boyle County Community Theatre". We had a great core group and wonderful followers, who became patrons for a minimal fee of $10.00 annually. That barely kept us afloat and we kept our expenses at a minimum.

At some point, Centre College offered us a couple of basement rooms in one of their older buildings. We got together one Saturday morning and painted EVERYTHING...black. The BLACK BOX was born. It was wonderful to have "our own space". There were drawbacks, of course. They played basketball above our heads in an old gym and the nearest restrooms were down the hall and we had to share them. There was no air conditioning. AND...there were poles in the sight lines of our stage. These were structural building poles, nothing that we could "remove". We just tried very hard not to seat folks in front of one, but there were about 8 and that was not easy. We had full houses for almost every show, so invariably somebody had to crane their neck, but there were no major complaints.