Richard Adams Variety Show at The Gateway
The Gateway’s zany Richard Adams Variety Show will take a detour to Germany for its October performance at WTA’s Gateway on Friday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. The show promises to top any Octoberfest you have ever attended.
Richard has recruited a host of specialty acts to celebrate the season. William Von Hayes and the Oom Pah Boys will bring their repertoire of Germanic drinking songs. The German opera sensation, Samuel Johnson, will give a bit of class to the musical entertainment and the tap-dancing wonder, Fraulein Diane Roberts, will trip the uber-light fantastic.
Also featured will be the ersatz German folktale “The Three Little Pigs Meet Kermit the Frog” along with the Schwarzenneger-Reagan Press Conference.
Audience members will have the opportunity to star in the “You Can Be on a Talk Show” and as “the German Weather Guy”. Whole new media careers may be opened for the unsuspected. The new floor manager, Herr Wilhem Martin will warm up the audience and help select the willing and unwilling.
Tickets for the Richard Adams Variety Show can be purchased online at www.waynesborogateway.com or at the door. Admission for the 7:30 p.m. performance is $9.99.
Gateway’s Top Comic opens Friday night
WTA’s Gateway will present the first round of the Top Comic Competition on Friday, Sept. 23, at 8 p.m.
The Charlottesville Comedy Roundtable will organize the Gateway Top Comic Competition. The best new comics from Richmond, Charlottesville and the surrounding area will descend upon Waynesboro to battle it out for the title of Top Comic.
Round One is on Friday, with 16 comics bringing their best five minute sets and going head to head with audience deciding the winners. The remaining 8 will return in October for round two with the audience deciding which four will advance to the finals at the end of November.
Make your reservations now and prepare to help decide who really is the TOP.NEW. COMIC.
Tickets are $10 and are available online at
www.WaynesboroGateway.com or at the door.
Community Mourning: Waynesboro loses local arts icon
The Waynesboro arts community is in mourning today over the sudden passing of artist, dramatist, author and retired Waynesboro High School teacher Duane Hahn.
“Duane … how can we imagine creative Waynesboro without you? I’m heartbroken,” wrote author and friend Elizabeth Massie on a Facebook post Thursday morning.
Hahn was an icon to the local cultural community. He taught in the Waynesboro school system for 33 years, and in 2000 was named the Virginia Secondary Communication Teacher of the Year. Former Waynesboro mayor Tom Reynolds noted on Facebook today that Hahn had taught all three of his children. Former vice mayor Nancy Dowdy said on Facebook that Hahn had taught her and her husband, Steve.
“Waynesboro will be less without him, but heaven is smiling. R.I.P. Mr Hahn!” Dowdy wrote.
A native of Waynesboro, Hahn earned a bachelor’s degree in education at Morehead State University. For several years Hahn developed and directed children’s theater for elementary schools in Waynesboro, and after his retirement from teaching continued work in children’s theater with the development of a series of plays focusing on social issues affecting children today.
His most recent children’s theater project, The Queen’s Fairy Quest, commissioned for The Lost Colony Waterside Theater, opened in June 2010.
Hahn was a long-time member of the Waynesboro Players community-theater group – joining the Players in 1976 and acting, directing and producing a number of productions, including Shenandoah Moon, a fictional account of the forced migration of natives of the hollars of the Blue Ridge with the development of the Shenandoah National Park in the 1930s, and Tuesday Mourning, the story of the Bedford Boys who lost their lives in the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.
Hahn was the primary author on Shenandoah Moon, which he also published as a book with Augusta Free Press Publishing, and on Tuesday Mourning, which is set for a revival production with the Waynesboro Players in June.
An accomplished ceramic artist, Hahn was also a member of the Artisans Center of Virginia and had recently had works on display in an ACV exhibition in Waynesboro.
“He was the kind of person who always had something going on,” said Crystal Graham, who had known Hahn since their days together on the board of directors of the Wayne Theatre Alliance and had worked closely with Hahn on the Shenandoah Moon book project – and had recently been in contact with Hahn about another project that he had in the works for the coming weeks.
“The Shenandoah Moon will be so much dimmer tonight,” wrote Massie, who collaborated with Hahn on the Shenandoah Moon project, on Facebook. “I truly believe you are with God now, safe and loved. Paint the heavens for us, sweetie. We’ll see you later.”
Tribute
Books/Plays
Art
Video
Tall Tale Tellers: A children’s theater production by Duane Hahn that takes us backstage at a Wild West show where Annie Oakley, Paul Bunyan, Calamity Jane and others try to outdo one another with stories of their most famous exploits.
From the AFP Archives
- Mourning in Bedford subject of new play, Nov. 5, 2009
- Author explores forced relocation of mountain families in ’30s, Jan. 15, 2009
- Tuna embraces, satirizes small-town South, Feb. 28, 2008
Dominion contributes to Wayne campaign
The Dominion Resources Inc. Foundation announced its third grant to the Wayne Theatre Alliance’s Capital Campaign. The Foundation has given a total of $11,000 to the campaign to restore the 1926 Wayne Theatre in downtown Waynesboro.
“The Foundation is pleased to contribute to the ‘Count Down to Curtain Up’ campaign,” said Emmett W. Toms, External Affairs Manager for Dominion’s Central Region, who presented the Foundation’s check. “Dominion applauds the community’s effort for the Wayne Theatre project. Revitalization of the historic theatre building will continue the cultural heritage for the enhancement of the area’s quality of life.”
In accepting the check from the Dominion Resources Inc. Foundation, John Curry, Chairman of the Wayne Theatre Capital Campaign said, “I am very pleased that Dominion Resources Inc. Foundation has shown the confidence and understanding of our effort to restore the Wayne Theatre by making a generous gift to our community. We are working diligently to complete our remaining fundraising goals, so that final reconstruction can be completed.”
“Count Down to Curtain Up” was launched in May, 2010 for the purpose of raising the remaining private donations needed for final construction to commence. Please contact the Wayne Theatre Alliance if you are interested in making a new or additional donation to the Theatre at 540.943.9999 or by e-mail at director@waynetheatre.org.
Edited by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Wayne effort taps into school, community spirit
The trend in political fundraising has been to tap into the power of the $10 and $20 and $50 donor. it takes a lot more of those size donations to add up, but they add up, and as they add up, the people who buy in add a weight to the momentum of the effort that they support far beyond their dollar power.
Gayle Mapstone, new to the board of directors of the Wayne Theatre Alliance last year, took note of the new trend in political giving and wondered if there wasn’t something to be applied to the ongoing effort to raise money for the renovation of the Downtown Waynesboro landmark.
“I felt like we needed to find a way to get the average citizen involved and to both increase the level of community pride for the project as well as find a way to make it comfortable for people to contribute who don’t have thousands and thousands of dollars to give, but they want to be a part of it, and their $25 or $50 is just as significant to the success of the project as someone else’s $1,000,” said Mapstone, who on her own initiative spent a snowy weekend in February writing and mailing letters to members of her graduating class of 1969 at Waynesboro High School encouraging them to contribute toward a class gift to the Wayne that is closing in on reaching a $10,000 goal.
The success there has in turn led to a fundraising campaign that the Wayne Theatre Alliance is calling Class’n the Wayne, with several class captains representing graduating classes at WHS, Wilson Memorial High School, Stuarts Draft High School, and local alums from the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech soliciting their classmates.
Augusta Free Press Publishing has pitched in to the effort. AFP Publishing donated web-design services to launch a new website for the Wayne Theatre Alliance and a page at ClassntheWayne.org that serves as the Internet home to the fundraising campaign.
The approach put into action by Mapstone seems uniquely Waynesboro.
“I have so many fond memories of Waynesboro growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, and remember with a great deal of pride being able to grow up in a small-town environment, where you knew all the local merchants, where you knew all the folks walking up and down the street. The people I wanted to reach out to were people I had gone to school with who I had grown up with,” Mapstone said.
“I can’t speak for later generations, but the people that I went to school with in the ’50s and ’60s had a lot of school pride and a lot of community pride. That’s what I think we can really tap into here,” Mapstone said.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
The World According To ChrisGraham.com: No I in team
First off, Waynesboro progressives are interesting progressives. I count as key members of the progressive base several people who I know (from having looked ‘em up online!) give money regularly to not only Emmett Hanger but also Steve Landes and Bob Goodlatte when they’re running for re-election.
That’s an indication of how far to the extreme right the right is here in Waynesboro. Those over in the middle look like pinko commie liberals in comparison.
So our tent is big. Had to get that out there for starters.
The big question – one I haven’t been able to get my hands around since I outed myself as a politically interested person two years ago when I declared and ran for City Council – what do we stand for?
(The sound you hear right now is crickets chirping.)
Link to column on TheWorldAccordingToChrisGraham.com.
WayneTheatre.org: A Night at the Wayne
Posted by afp on August 23, 2010 · Leave a Comment
You can access the link here.
Mark Miller Photography is online here.
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