Archive for the ‘Wayne’s World’ Category

We can’t tell you how excited we are to debut four brand new titles for you this year! And we’re equally thrilled to launch this spectacular season with Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, our fourth production of this “River City” classic in our 40 year history. The energy and anticipation surrounding this particular summer are terrifically encouraging.

And yet, I feel compelled to borrow a phrase from Harold Hill, “Friends!  May I have your attention, please!”

If anyone tries to convince our own “river city” citizens that the arts aren’t good for business, let us please consider the 250 jobs Music Theatre of Wichita creates every summer, decade after decade.

Look at the 70% of our three million dollar annual budget that we aggressively return into the Wichita economy. Here is where we buy our steel, our wood, our fabrics. Here is where we pay sales tax and rent. Here is where we annually become the largest summer employer of musicians and stagehands.

Let’s calculate the hotel room nights we pay for in Wichita – over 900 of them each summer – not counting those booked by folks who travel from all across the country to see our shows!  Let’s add up the dozens of summer-long apartment rentals for our cast and crew.

Ask the downtown restaurant owners and shop managers how much they feel the impact of each MTWichita season.

If you doubt the value of a city having a vibrant cultural life, then ask our generous corporate sponsors why they feel compelled to partner with us each year, ensuring that skilled employees can be attracted to live and work in our community.  

And if someone tries to paint what theatre people do as silly or frivolous, I invite them to spend a week observing our technical shops, marveling at the expertise and patience with which our professional artisans train and nurture the college and high school students in their shops – creating a team that can invent prototypes, solve problems, and ingeniously manufacture a most astonishing assortment of objects.  What other shop in town, using professional workers and student trainees, could create a Hollywood mansion, a 1980s roller disco, and an undersea kingdom, in just about ten weeks?

And provide appropriate clothing and period-perfect hair for all of their inhabitants?

Come watch even an hour of rehearsal, to see how brilliantly these top-of-the-line up-and-comers assimilate massive amounts of information, while forging themselves into a precision-drilled, passionately motivated performing unit.

 If you think a summer stock theatre in Wichita, Kansas, has little or no lasting impact on people’s lives, ask the hundreds of successful theatre artists – no fewer than 30 of them working on Broadway at this moment – who honed their skills and found their careers during summers at Century II.

But why am I telling YOU this? You’re here! You understand! You are part of our 40-year success story!  How can we ever sufficiently praise you and thank you?

(Still, if you happen to come across any of those who haven’t yet seen the light, do feel free to spread the word.  We love that, too!)

Enjoy the shows this summer. Thank you for making them happen!