Campus Theatre to open

Although the historic Campus Theatre, located at 135 Hancock St. in downtown Milledgeville, will not reopen with a showing of Frank Capra’s “Broadway Bill” like it did in 1935, it does have new venues that will benefit not only students, but also the local community as well.

Inside the theater there will be a retail bookstore and a Jittery Joe’s coffee shop that will inhabit the front of the building. The “black box” performance space and accommodations for theater students will be housed in the back portion of the building.

A soft opening for the bookstore portion of the facility is expected in late March around the time students return from spring break. The official opening of the theater, as a whole, is expected in late April although no official opening date has been set.

On Feb. 22, 2008, GCSU purchased the historic building and later began renovating it.

Mark Bowen, GCSU’s project manager, explained how the current layout of the building contrasts from it’s former design of a segregated past.

“When you enter the middle doors here, you will be entering the main part, the retail bookstore. Of course, to the right you will have a coffee shop, Jittery Joe’s and towards the back is the entrance to the black box theater portion for students to practice and perform productions,” Bowen said.

With renovations begun in October 2008, anticipation mounts as the final coats of paint are applied and the main doors are propped open daily, for the curious passer-by to get a sneak peek inside.

Essentially, the idea is to give back to the community by providing not only a new coffee shop, but also a retail bookstore that will house not only textbooks, but also other leisure-reading materials.

The Theatre Department may have more reason than most to welcome the theater’s reopening.

The back portion of the theater houses the black box theater, but also an acting lab, classroom, two spacious dressing rooms, three full bathrooms and a wardrobe closet that contains a washer and dryer to clean dirty costumes.

Evan Fields, a junior theatre major, feels the Campus Theatre will be very beneficial for the Theatre Department.

“I am very excited about the new theater opening. For years the Theatre Department has had to share (its) performance spaces with many other departments around the school,” Fields said. “It will give us our own space to learn, practice and perform in.”

Although the historic look of the exterior of the theater has been preserved, the inside of the facility has been remodeled with modern accommodations.

Bowen does have some concerns about how the theater will be accepted by the community.

“We hope people don’t think we are renovating it to the original 1935 status as solely a theater. It is a black box theater but it’s nothing like when there was a sloped floor, a main stage and balcony upstairs,” Bowen said.

With a three-in-one design, concerns may come up about one part of the theater interfering with another.

“I am a little torn about the theater having a coffee shop and bookstore. I was very excited about us having our own space and a part of me thinks that the coffee shop and bookstore takes away from that,” Fields said.

That said, the renovations should allow for plenty of flexibility without interference.

“We have ways to keep the coffee shop, bookstore and theater separate. This is why there are so many doors. For example, if the theater has an after-hours production, people can buy their tickets at the front booth and go around to the side entrance of the building while the bookstore and coffee shop are closed,” Bowen said.

Students who were not familiar with the theater before the renovations won’t fully understand all of the changes that were made, Bowen said.

History can still be found in little pieces throughout the building. Original flooring, stairs, a ticket booth and brick walls inside give glimpses into the past.

“It is amazing. It doesn’t even look like the same place. We are glad it has worked out so well for us. We are sort of afraid that the people will step in for the first time and see it and say that it looks nothing like it used to when they came in as teenagers,” Bowen said. “I think they will be amazed at how it turned out.”

Posted by Elise Colcord on Jan 22 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry