Rendering for the Cape Fear Regional Theatre construction project. (Contributed photo – Cape Fear Regional Theatre)
Pat Reese and Bo Thorp perform in ‘On Golden Pond” in 1986.
(Photo courtesy- Cape Fear Regional Theatre)
In our conversations over the last couple of years of her life, we often reflected on the journey of our theater, and each talk always had an eye on the future. For the handful of us that started in that old shutdown movie house with no money, second-hand folding chairs, a platform stage and homemade vegetable can lighting to witness a $2.5 million request from our city to help build the future home of CFRT would have a meaning that perhaps only she could fully appreciate.
Mayon Weeks on the late Bo Thorp, founding artistic director of Cape Fear Regional Theatre, which is asking the City Council for $2.5 million to continue with renovations of the theater
Bill Kirby Jr.: A jewel atop Haymount Hill, where ‘great stories told’
Once, the building was just an old movie theater on Haymount Hill with late film stars to include Rock Hudson and Susan Hayworth starring on the screen.
But no longer.
“We discovered the jewel of Cape Fear Regional Theatre early on,” Marcos Soltren would say among a roomful at City Hall on Monday evening to urge the Fayetteville City Council to consider the theater’s request for $2.5 million at $500,000 per year for the ensuing five years for Phase 2 of its ongoing $20 million expansion project for the playhouse, circa 1962.
Theater aficionados turned out one after another at the public hearing, and passionate they were in telling the council what Cape Fear Regional Theatre has meant to all ages in this community and what the council’s financial support can mean beyond.
City Manager Douglas Hewett has included $250,000 in his proposed 2023-24 fiscal budget, but theater folks say they need the full commitment of $2.5 million to offset escalating building costs and to assure a timely presence on top of the hill.
“We can actually build the building that we designed for just about $20 million,” Mary Kate Burke, artistic director of the theater, told the council. “We have a three-year plan that will enable us to continue producing and teaching our classes while the building is under construction, and with your support at $2.5 million, we will break ground at this time next year en route to opening this incredible facility in the fall of 2025.”
But …
“Without the fully funded request,” Burke would say, “this project will be delayed.”
Ay, if you will pardon the parlance from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there’s the rub.
“We will be hard pressed to raise the 70% shortfall between our request and what is currently funded in the budget,” Burke told the council. “As you know, construction rates increase with every passing day, and if we are delayed, this project will become more expensive. … Other grant-making organizations and other governmental bodies will take their cues for their level of support from you. The state has come in, and we need you to invest at a level that is reflective of the incredible work we are doing.”
Those who have attended productions at the theater have come to know that Mary Kate Burke is one who never takes a breath when it comes to touting the work of the theater, whether it be a play, a musical or a summer camp for young and aspiring actors.
She wasn’t taking a breath Monday night in encouraging the council to appreciate the theater on the hill.
“We’re going to impact 50,000 people,” Burke would say. “We aren’t jumping the line. We’ve been on the line for 63 years, and investing in this project will make the line shorter for other projects because we're going to increase the real estate value in our area. We generate sales tax on every ticket we sell, and when we complete our new building, our budget is going to grow. And with more growth is more sales tax for the city to continue to do the good work of our community.”
Phase 1 of the theater’s interior renovation in 2021 came at a cost of $1 million, according to Burke, with new and more spacious seating, an HVAC system, a custom sound system designed by a Tony Award-winning sound designer and new LED lighting. It was financed through private donations, the Cannon Foundation and McLean Foundation.
“Everything inside the envelope of the theater was renovated,” Burke said Thursday. “The McLean Foundation was the first in and really their belief in the project has been instrumental.”
If the stage and backstage and 273-audience seating is the heart of the theater, the exterior is the face and the front porch.
“Phase 2 is everything to the left of the theater,” Burke said. “We will build up, adding a second floor, an education wing with two classrooms, more scene shop space, a rooftop experience with additional programming opportunities for local artists to continue their craft, and more building-wide ADA accessibility, including an elevator.”
A community jewel
Great stories, theater folks on the hill like to say about plays and musicals and productions for six decades, told here.
And on Monday, they were telling a story of another kind that can surpass the theater’s genesis that began with the dream of the late Olga “Bo” Thorp and a promise made by her late husband, Herbert Thorp, to build a theater not only for his wife’s passion but for a community.
“Mary Kate and I came to Fayetteville six and five years ago, respectively, both from New York City,” Ella Wrenn, the theater’s managing director, would tell the council. “We both came to Fayetteville because we believe that the role regional theaters play in creating communities is vital, and we believe that theater in service of a specific community creates art that is deeply meaningful, reflective of the people and essential to our shared humanity.
“We believe that the arts are for all.
“We first submitted our request to the city for funding on Jan. 31 of this year, but we started working on this campaign in early 2020,” Wrenn would say about the Phase 1 interior renovation of the theater when the COVID-19 health pandemic suspended productions and the theater’s financial revenue. “And in that time, we have completed and fully paid for a $1 million Phase 1 renovation and raised $10.5 million for the Phase 2 expansion through quiet fundraising. The renovated building will be a jewel for our community. It will take our cloistered former movie theater and make it into a transparent, beautiful hub for the arts.”
A jewel, Willie Wright would tell the council, this theater is in this community.
“I would like to start by saying I spent 30 years in the military and retired in 1989, and then I went into the Cumberland County school system and spent 26 years and retired in 2016,” he would say. “But my pride is the fact that I have spent 32 years with Cape Fear Regional Theatre.
“Why? Because Cape Fear Regional Theatre is a jewel for Fayetteville for three reasons.
“It’s committed to providing first-class entertainment to surrounding areas, and when I say surrounding areas, I’m talking about Lillington, Raeford, Pinehurst, Southern Pines, Wilmington. And we have buses coming from Raleigh, all which provide revenue for our city,” the 86-year-old theater house manager would say. “In March of 2023, ‘Matilda’ had an attendance of 9,000.”
The theater reaches beyond the Cape Fear region, Zach Pritchett would tell the council.
“In every ZIP code in North Carolina and in more than 30 states,” said Pritchett, who is president of the theater’s board of directors and heavily involved as a member of the steering committee for the multiphase renovation project, “that we are undertaking as a gift to everyone in this community.”
Cape Fear Regional Theatre, he would say, long has been a part of his life.
“As a young child, I can remember being mesmerized by the flashing lights of the CFRT marquee,” he would tell the council. “And the excitement I experienced when I finally saw my very first live performance.”
One great testimonial after another
Theater supporters kept coming to the microphone for their three minutes to plead with the council for the $2.5 million funding request.
Amber Whitaker said the theater’s summer acting classes have been a godsend for her daughter in the past three years.
“My daughter has fallen in love with theater,” Whitaker, a special education teacher at E.E. Smith High School, would say, “and she has met lifelong friends that have now crossed paths that never may have crossed paths before. The theater also has provided scholarships for my daughter to continue to pursue her passion. … I’m forever thankful for what they have done for my daughter.”
Lasherrie Draughon would say how the theater has impacted the life of her young daughter, too.
“She was so excited to be a part of the summer camp experience,” Draughon would say. “School had just recently opened after being closed due to COVID, and Lana was missing the social, emotional learning experience due to the isolation. Cape Fear Regional Theatre provided the community that she needed and she still needs.”
Summer acting camp, Draughon would say, gave her daughter an opportunity to audition for the theater’s production of “The Color Purple.”
“This took her from the theater camp to the main stage. Now at this time, she so desperately needed an outlet to unplug from the stresses of life, and this opportunity provided,” Draughon said. “She’d come home with excitement talking about having the opportunity to work with Broadway director and choreographer Brian Harlan Brooks. He told her she was destined for greatness. This experience gave her so much confidence that has permeated in her world outside of theater.”
Great stories, theater folks say, are told on Haymount Hill.
The City Council was learning Monday night of grand stories, too, from theater advocates to include Angela Malloy and downtown businessman John Malzone, an ambassador of this city for more than five decades.
“I am here to also urge the council to fully fund the Cape Fear Regional Theatre’s request,” Malzone would say. “I was very fortunate when I opened my real estate office in Fayetteville in 1978 that a guy named Herb Thorpe was my attorney. Through Herbert, I met his lovely bride, Bo, a nice Italian girl, and she introduced me to the theater. And I’m gonna tell you, when I first started and I would show people what there was to do in Fayetteville, and trust me, in 1978, there wasn’t much. But Cape Fear Regional Theatre turned their heads, and I’m still doing that tour and Cape Fear Regional Theatre is still an asset. This theater is so phenomenal, and it is such a tremendous asset, and in the face of all kinds of problems, they have never shirked back at a time when local, well-known established theaters are closing all across our country.”
The youngest theater supporter would have her say, too.
“I’m here to tell you that the CFRT is an amazing theater, and it really helped me grow a lot,” little Melody Smith, 9, a William H. Owen Elementary School fourth-grader, would say. “And I really respect that they helped me do all of this stuff that I never thought I could do at this theater. And I would like to sing a song for you.”
She sang “Seasons of Love” from “Rent,” the musical, and supporters joined in.
“Wow!” Mayor Pro Tem Johnny Dawkins would say afterward.
City Hall, be assured, never saw a public hearing like this one.
Support from theater advocates was not lost on City Councilwoman Shakeyla Ingram.
“As you’ve seen here tonight, the Cape Fear Regional Theatre is impacting and changing lives additionally right in front of your eyes,” Ingram told her council colleagues. “Tonight, you’ve seen that they’ve fostered a level of community that I know that we wish we would all see more of in this city. While we may not vote on the budget tonight, I ask that when you go home you think about what you’ve heard, seen and felt with recognition of each and every one of our districts being impacted by what they do.”
Councilman Mario Benavente would concur with the councilwoman.
Grand lady of the theater’s presence
You could feel the presence Monday evening of so many actors present and past who have graced the Cape Fear Regional Theatre stage, from Tom Savini, Suzanne Ishee, Tom Michelle, Brian Whitted, David Castaneda, Grady Bowman, Rabin Parish, Molly Griggs, Halle Vargas-Sullivan, Leonard McLeod, Elizabeth McRae, the unforgettable curmudgeon-like Pat Reese, Tony Award nominee NaTasha Yvette Williams and Tony Award recipient J. Harrison Ghee for best lead actor in the Broadway production of “Some Like It Hot.”
And Olga “Bo” Thorp.
She was one of them — “Dolly,” “Adelaide,” “Carrie,” “Miss Daisy” and “Ethel” and Willie Loman’s devoted wife in “Death of a Salesman.” She was more than another Cape Fear Regional Theatre actress and its longtime artistic director. Olga “Bo” Thorp, who died at age 89 on Oct. 14, 2022, was the grand lady of Cape Fear Regional Theatre.
“I believe she would have been pleased, excited and appreciative, but not at all surprised,” longtime friend and fellow actor Mayon Weeks says. “In our conversations over the last couple of years of her life, we often reflected on the journey of our theater, and each talk always had an eye on the future. For the handful of us that started in that old shutdown movie house with no money, second-hand folding chairs, a platform stage and homemade vegetable can lighting to witness a $2.5 million request from our city to help build the future home of CFRT would have a meaning that perhaps only she could fully appreciate.”
Epilogue
There’s something about a theater stage production. An intimacy, if you will, between actors and audience. It’s a connection you can only appreciate if you’ve sat in one of those 273 seats of Cape Fear Regional Theatre, with the mantra of “Great Stories Told Here” on the top of the Hay Street hill.
“Our theater is growing,” John Malzone would put the exclamation point on this night at City Hall. “Our theater sees the future.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
