Throughout our off-season, many exciting (and necessary!) upgrades have been made in an effort to boost the technical quality of our productions. A new HVAC system has been installed, equipping the theatre with more efficient heating and cooling systems. We have purchased and installed almost $70,000 worth of sound and lighting equipment. We now have new, elegant stage draperies, a digital sound console, a full set of 12 professional, musical theatre style performance microphones, a full array of boundary microphones to add a more reinforced sound to our hearing impaired system, and a new inventory of LED colour changing Source Four lamps (that give us an endless amount of colour and lighting options while keeping energy and heat consumption to an all time low). The results? An absolutely incredible audio and visual quality. We can't wait for you to experience it this season!
Showboat Festival Theatre in Port Colborne announced in the fall of 2012 that it was closing its doors. This was shocking news to the community and to other theatres in the summer stock circuit – Showboat had been around for 25 plus years! Inspired by the theatre's incredible potential, Lighthouse's Board of Directors voted in favour of trying to save it. So last summer, Lighthouse toured four of our main season shows to Port Colborne, thereby providing Showboat with a 2013 season, and eliminating all threat of closure.
Lighthouse is currently finalizing a complete, formal amalgamation of all of Showboat's operations. How exciting! This means that Lighthouse will soon, officially, become a 2-venue organization, and Showboat Theatre will live on in Port Colborne. Four of Lighthouse's main season shows will again be travelling to Showboat for an extra one-week run after they close here. It feels good to not only save another Canadian theatre, but to now have the capacity to offer actors, designers and crew even more work and longer contracts.
From our Fall and Winter
Conservatory classes, to March
Break Camp, to July Camps and
August Young Company, the fun
never stops. And the learning
and personal growth our young stars experience is remarkable. With the help of our loyal students and the donors and sponsors that support them, we have been able to offer year-long programming for 5 years in a row. And this is just the beginning. Plans for 2014/2015 P.A. Day workshops are now
in the works, with the intention of providing professional instruction in a variety of dramatic arts for a series of day sessions throughout the year... Stay tuned!
Eventually, we would like to see Showboat with 3-week runs of each performance and
packed audiences, as we have seen at Lighthouse each season. Do you think we can do it!?
The past 35 remarkable seasons at Lighthouse would not have been possible without the support of our many volunteers, donors, and patrons. Together, we are strengthening the fabric of Canadian theatre.... right here in Norfolk County.
THANK YOU.
HVAC
& SOUND