I am sad to share this announcement with you today from the Newton Country Players’ Facebook page:
Dear Friends of the Newton Country Players (NCP),
As you may know, the group has faced many challenges after having left our “home” at the Windsor Club in Waban several years ago. The hunt for a new space for performing, rehearsing, and storage takes up a lot of time and money.
While we have enjoyed many artistic successes, our audience size has shrunk dramatically, making it very difficult to launch a show with a reasonable budget. At a recent meeting of the NCP Board, a decision was made to close the group. It was an enormously difficult decision after weighing various alternatives and different ways to keep forging ahead without sacrificing the quality of our productions.
We sincerely thank all of the talented cast and crew members who have worked with NCP, as well as those who have supported the group in other ways over the last 57 years.
With much gratitude,
NCP Board of Directors: Colleen Locke, Liz Peet, Jean MacFarland, John Fitzpatrick, Julie Wiseman, Sarah Roth Carda, Stacy Andler, Susan Rubin, Tom Donaghey
This announcement is an unfortunate addition to Turtle Lane’s closing last year and Newton Symphony Orchestra’s official closing announcement this past March (while their final performance was spring 2011, a very heart-wrenching decision!).
I would love to talk to you all more about Newton’s arts and culture landscape in the coming weeks and months via this blog for starters. I would love to participate in conversations with you because, truly, as an arts administrator in town I want and need to know what you as an individual and/or as a family member are looking for from your local arts community. Together I am sure that we can make wonderful things happen in our town! Newton has amazing resources and I hope to share more of them with you and then help shape them so we can continue to be a thoughtful creative community.
In the meantime, I want to thank Newton Country Players for their dedication to community arts and theater and wish all of them the very best. I hope to see you on stage again soon!
Another blow to live theatre in our community. We need a worthy performance venue in Newton. Arts and culture can be a tremendous economic driver – we are missing the boat. Mayor Warren, HELP! This can be your legacy. Aquinas or Riverside – either would be a fabulous site, and would bring in visitors from other communities, who would spend money in our restaurants and village centers. We could have a vibrant and lively cultural scene! Goodbye and thank you, NCP!
Agree. Big loss.
This is too sad. I agree with Native – we need a public performance space in town.
Absolutely. It’s not exactly in the same category, but the new Hyde Bandstand in Newton Highlands is already having a leveraging effect on the number of people attending Friday evening concerts and the dynamics of the concerts themselves. It’s hard to quantify. You just feel it when you are there. It’s a smaller version of a highly identifiable central “public performance space” that mgwa envisions for a full range of artistic events.
Completely agree as well, especially after Turtle Lane’s closing. A public performance space would also be a great adjunct to the restaurants we’ve been bringing back to the village centers.
A performance venue in Newton? We’ve already got it, and it’s even conveniently located near restaurants. Isn’t this one of the reasons we built it?
It’s stunning. It’s known state-wide. Let’s use it.
Bruce – my guess is that it isn’t feasible for groups that need lots of rehearsals in their performing space, at least not during the school year. Does anyone know if the NCP or NS looked into using NNHS?
Hi folks,
You’ve inspired a facilities focused post. I’ll try and post one today but, in the meantime…
NNHS has a beautiful facility and they have many talented performers. This means that most of the time, the auditorium is booked for the school’s own rehearsals and performances. (Which is a great thing!) Because of school’s planning times it is also difficult to book a performance early enough in advance to get it in one’s season brochure.
From what I have heard (though it shouldn’t necessarily be quoted as fact) is that it is also somewhat expensive to use the auditorium for outside groups because of all the necessary folks needed to run the auditorium’s technologies plus what is required from the school in terms of maintenance for each program. These professionals are union and tend to cost more than most community groups can afford, considering so many of these groups are powered by volunteers or amateur techs.
In terms of NCP and NSO, it seems that a large part of the downfall is in audience development and maintenance. But that’s a conversation for another day!
Kara is correct about NNHS – their Theatre Ink productions number between 11 – 14 per school year. And that doesn’t count other concerts and recitals by the Fine and Performing Arts Department. And, correct, also, is the fact that it is expensive to use this facility. A perfect example is the use of Waltham HS for the Reagle Players, though – the availability is limited during the school year, but they use it in the summer.
I believe Suzuki School of Newton is now no longer in Newton as well because of lack of appropriate space.
Many community groups used to use the theater at the Aquinas/Rashi property.
Community arts are an important part of our civic life. It is sad to see them disappear this way.
Correct – Suzuki’s preschool is operating out of Temple Reyim but the music school still does not have a home now that the Carr School is emptied out for renovation. The Newton Cultural Alliance is trying hard to renovate the Allen House in West Newton, but that will not be a large venue (it may work for Suzuki, however). The Mayor’s Office for Cultural Affairs has moved from Carr to City Hall but there is not sufficient / appropriate space for the daily children’s arts programs.
@Native Newtonian – you know your arts news! Right now Suzuki is running its music school out of Temple Reyim as well though it is considered to be a temporary fix. The loss of space for Linda Plaut’s programs through MOCA is really sad; those daily children’s programs are really popular and important for childhood development. The other big loss from Carr School is the auditorium. It wasn’t gorgeous and it wasn’t perfect, but it provided great space for Newton Open Studios, small theater productions (including summertime works from Theatre Ink students), charitable events, and more!
The summertime shows that you refer to are perfect examples of how theatre can grow into something so much more! You are referring to Circuit Theatre, a small company founded and directed by a NNHS alum who is now a student at Brown University. Those kids transformed the Carr auditorium into a first class performance venue with incredible scenery and lighting (yet, sadly, no air conditioning – yikes). They now perform all over the Greater Boston area, except for Newton! Well, a quick stop on the Newton Centre Green but that’s not much….. Pretty sad that they had to outgrow their roots so quickly because we in newton have nothing to offer them!
I myself used the Carr auditorium for concerts. Yup, far from perfect but we made it work. We couldn’t use temples because we needed to run bake sales and could not bring non-kosher food into Reyim or Mishkan Tefila. Carr was the only game in town, and it worked. We should, however, have better!
Thanks, Kara, for trying to “stir this pot.”