THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 3, 1995 TAG: 9503030398
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
It's a pleasant summer afternoon in the scene set by Ron Ulrich.
A high-speed ferry or tour boat glides to rest at a new dock off College of The Albemarle's riverfront campus.
Vacationers fan out across campus or across town, visiting shops, hotels and restaurants, and return to the COA auditorium in time for the main attraction:
A professionally performed musical, headlined by a star actor.
Ulrich is a theater administrator from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and is visiting the area this week at the invitation of some theatrically minded locals. After touring the area and talking with dozens of people, Ulrich says an eight- or 10-week summer theater based at COA could bring thousands of visitors - and their money - to Elizabeth City.
And he's confident he can coax the stars to town.
``If I can get them to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada,'' he said at the home of local community leader Winnie Wood on Thursday, ``then I can get them here easy.''
Wood and a handful of other residents invited Ulrich with the hope that a commercial summer theater could put the COA auditorium to better use than it's getting now.
The 1,000-seat theater, built in part with $600,000 in private funds that Wood helped raise, is sorely underused. It costs the college about $60,000 a year.
``Originally, we saw it as a community theater,'' Wood said, adding that overhead costs price the venue out of the range of most local groups. ``We did not anticipate how much it was going to cost us to heat or cool it.''
That's why Wood and a few others are now considering the private route. They want to form a company that will lease the auditorium from COA during the summer months and run a three-show repertory theater that draws its audience from Hampton Roads and the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Outer Banks.
The group is also tossing around ideas of using the summer theater as an internship opportunity for regional theater students.
Ulrich is ``someone who has worked within this kind of situation and made it pay for people,'' said Elizabeth City resident Peter Thomson, who used some Canadian contacts to find Ulrich. ``He's had a lot of successes in running theaters just outside of major metropolitan areas.''
The informal committee raising the curtain on the theater project took Ulrich on a whirlwind tour of the Albemarle, and they say they've received positive comments from Dare County to Elizabeth City. Thursday afternoon, they pitched the concept to Pasquotank County Board of Commissioners Chairman Zee Lamb.
``I don't see any problem with it,'' Lamb said. ``I think you all have a big job in front of you.''
Also cautiously optimistic was COA President Larry Donnithorne, who said from his office Thursday that the project ``could lead to putting Elizabeth City on the map in a new way.''
``I'm very concerned about the initial funding for making it happen,'' Donnithorne added. ``I've kind of left that up to our volunteer committee. I'm happily facilitating their work in any way that I can.''
Thomson said start-up funds would probably come from private investors. Group members emphasized that they are proposing a business venture.
No one was ready to speculate what starting the business could cost, or how much money it could bring in. The first season would be 1996 at the earliest, they said.
But project supporters say the professional theater might be the only way for the community to recoup its investment in the auditorium.
``I know of nothing else,'' Thomson said, ``that could do the job of reinvigorating the facility out there in a permanent kind of way.'' by CNB