As head of Richland Northeast High School's Palmetto Center for the Arts , Donna Wilson and her students made five trips to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, an annual performance festival that takes over the medieval city and presents music, theater and comedy in bars, historic structures and galleries, to name a few. Wilson and her students performed their plays in churches like Greenside Parish Church, a nearly-300-year-old gothic sanctuary near the heart of Old Town. "They’re places that you just can't imagine doing a show in, but there it is and it’s magnificent," said Wilson, who is now retired.
"That was part of the beauty of it, was just seeing how creative people can be." Wilson was accompanied to Scotland by Greg Boatwright, a freelance musician who's worked in most artistic spheres in the Midlands, including local theater. The Fringe Festival sparked an idea for Boatwright, one that's coming to fruition after years of planning and fundraising.
Housed in Virginia Wingard United Methodist Church, the Broad River Arts Center is Columbia's newest arts and theater venue. Situated along Broad River Road, BRAC, as the founders are calling it, will produce plays and musicals, host concerts and endeavor to bring more arts to the St. Andrews corridor.
The cast of "Showtune," the first production from Broad River Arts Center are (from left) S arah Alexander, Curran Bramhall, Kerri Roberts, Jonah Isaac-Brooks and Taylor McCullough. "We felt the St. Andrews area needed something, and we wanted to contribute," said Wilson, who serves as BRAC's board president.
While Boatwright "simmered" on the idea for a nonprofit-theater-inside-a-church for years, it wasn't until he took it to the congregation at Virginia Wingard UMC that his idea cemented into reality. Luckily, he said, the church was enthusiastically on board, a well as the statewide governing body for the Protestant Christian denomination. Without permission from both the church and the larger UMC body to outfit the church's multi-purpose space into an intimate, 140-seat performance hall, Boatwright said BRAC would never have succeeded.
"Trying to build this from the ground up would be millions of dollars," said Boatwright, who also serves as musical director for Virginia Wingard UMC. "And the only way to do it — and our future is this way — is hybrid." Story continues below Boatwright raised funds for a stage, lighting and sound systems outside of the congregation, and received a sizeable grant from the Edward & Dorothy Kendall Foundation.
"We wouldn’t be having this conversation without them," Boatwright said of the local philanthropists. The arts center's inaugural season kicks off Sept. 5 with a production of "Showtune" by Jerry Herman.
Cindy Flach directs a cast of musical theater students from the University of South Carolina, as well as a handful of local actors. The rest of the season's productions include "The World According to Snoopy," "Quilters" and "And The World Goes 'Round." Broad River Arts Center is a new nonprofit theater and events venue embedded inside Virginia Wingard United Methodist Church in the St.
Andrews area of Columbia. Boatwright hopes to curate a selection of monthly concerts for Sunday afternoons. "We’re able to pick or choose any art form," Boatwright, BRAC's director, said.
"We can feature visual artists. I have hope we can maybe establish a poetry contest or readings featuring authors ..
. not just music and theater." Boatwright and Wilson, both of whom have worked in schools and local theater groups for decades, hope to incorporate students into the productions, too.
It's all in an effort to provide a resource for St. Andrews, a Census-designated community that straddles Richland and Lexington counties. The Broad River Arts Center premieres its inaugural production on Sept.
5. Visit broadriverartscenter.org or visit the nonprofit at 1500 Broad River Road for more information.
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