DATE: Thursday, November 13, 1997           TAG: 9711130518

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: MANTEO                            LENGTH:   77 lines

CURTAIN MIGHT FALL ON THEATER GROUP WITH LITTLE FUNDS

If education officials continue to charge The Theater of Dare for using school buildings, the curtain could come down for good on the Outer Banks drama group.

Theater members plan to cancel the rest of their performances for the 1997-98 season and will hold a meeting today at 11 a.m. to discuss the group's future.

But during a school board meeting Tuesday night, acting Chairwoman Virginia Tillett said she had received numerous phone calls and asked the board's policy committee to re-examine the fees community groups are charged to use public schools.

``I don't believe it was anyone's intention to run us out of town,'' Theater of Dare President Julia Scheer said Wednesday. ``But that, in effect, is what's happening.''

Dare County's Board of Education began charging community groups for using school buildings in 1991. Standard fees are $25 per hour plus a $15 hourly fee for a custodian or other building supervisor. If a faculty member also is a member of the community group using the school, the $15-per-hour supervisory fee can be waived, school spokeswoman Janice Tillett said.

County-sponsored sports teams use school buildings for free. The College of the Albemarle doesn't have to pay to hold classes in them either.

Up until this fall, The Theater of Dare has not been charged for using school stages, Janice Tillett said. But the fees for this fall's production of ``Arsenic and Old Lace'' will amount to about $2,000, Scheer said.

When education officials decided last month to begin enforcing their policy on paying for building use, the nonprofit drama group was the only organization affected.

``It's costing us money to let The Theater of Dare use the school,'' Janice Tillett said. ``They weren't paying us anything. Yet other groups are being charged.

``Boy Scouts and other all-student groups don't have to pay because they meet mostly in the afternoon, and all their members go to our schools. But the Dare County Arts Council pays our fees when they use our auditoriums. And Cape Hatteras Electric Co-op pays when their members meet at Cape Hatteras School.''

When theater officials first approached the education board four years ago about staging productions in county schools, Janice Tillett said, the fees were waived because board members believed it was ``a one-time thing.''

``Now, it's been going on and on, year after year. We just needed to recoup our costs somehow.''

Theater organizers, however, said their group is being singled out. Two members of the organization also are Dare County teachers. Yet education officials told theater leaders that they would have to pay the $15-per-hour supervisory fee in addition to the $25-per-hour rental charge.

``Those charges would be more than we make on an average show,'' Theater of Dare spokeswoman Kathy Morrison said. ``It would cost us $2,000 to $2,500 just to use the school. On some shows we only make $200. Our best show ever made $3,000. That wouldn't leave us any money at all to stage the productions.''

All actors, technicians, directors, set designers and costumers who work for the theater are volunteers. Many of the performers and assistants are students. So Morrison and Scheer said they can't understand why their group is not also exempt from the fees.

``I can see, if we're consuming electricity, then let's do some kind of reasonable reimbursement,'' Morrison said. ``We offered to pay the schools 20 percent of what we take in with ticket sales - but they turned that offer down. I think that was an acceptable effort at compromise.''

About 800 people attend each of the Theater of Dare's three annual productions. Scheer said school officials should take community service into account and acknowledge that students not only are in the plays; some also get extra credit for assisting with or even attending the shows. Besides, she said, tax money pays for the auditoriums, and they should be open for anyone in the community to use.

``We're providing a service to Dare County students,'' she said. ``The school drama departments have used our stage sets, props, lights, sound equipment - even our personnel. We'd usually charge $100 a day for that. But we've been letting the schools use it for nothing. I think that's a reciprocal agreement in exchange for us using their buildings.

``We are dismayed this has come up,'' Scheer said. ``We had no warning these fees would be forthcoming. We just can't afford what they're asking.''

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