There's really no way of knowing with my
venue. We've been in our
current location since 1941 and the facilities have gone through a number of renovations and upgrades in the nearly seven decades since then. In the late '40's or early '50's, the original
stage building was torn down and replaced with the
current structure, which has, itself, gone through an unknown number of upgrades and renovations over the years, most recently upgrading our backstage work lights from 60 year old
incandescent drop lights to brighter, more energy efficient, high bay fluorescents. For the 2004 season, we replaced our 4 dilapidated work shop and storage buildings with a single 10,000 square ft. shop building with separate areas for carpentry, welding, electrics, painting, foam sculpting, and even office and storage space. In the time I've been on staff at the
pageant, we've added 6 permanent lighting trusses to the
amphitheatre and expanded our dimming capacity by about 30%.
In the 1960's we added a second performance space, a 232 seat enclosed
theatre, which has also gone through an unknown number of upgrades since it was built.
Then there's the Festival of Arts grounds, the 5.6 acre site which both of our performance spaces are located. This, as with the two performance spaces has seen a great many changes in its design, function, and appearance over the intervening decades. I've seen plans for the grounds from the 1950's, and they bear little resemblance to the
current facilities.
The use and appearance of our facilities are constantly changing as needs and budgets permit. I guarantee that if the people who built the
amphitheatre for the 1941
Pageant season were to walk into our facility today, they would not recognize it as the same place. While we still do, essentially the same show, though individual pictures and themes vary from year to year, in both form and function, we have a vastly different
venue than we had then.
