Cast of Ragtime, New Stage Theater (Photo from NST on Facebook)
- From beginning in a wonderful old church to what it is now, John Maxwell writes that New Stage Theater in Jackson is quite an achievement.
Last Thursday night I saw New Stage Theater‘s production of Ragtime. It closed its run Sunday. It was a wonderful production.
Francine Reynolds has and continues to be the catalyst for the remarkable at New Stage. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have plenty of terrific help, she does. Bill McCarty, Dawn Buck, and the inimitable Richard Lawrence just to name a few are all a huge part of that success.
Do we realize what we have in Jackson? When Jane Reid Petty first envisioned New Stage, is this what she imagined? So much of its success belongs with that lady, as well. Back in 1966 it opened with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Petty had the audacity to insist on an integrated audience. From that beginning in a wonderful old church to what it is now is quite an achievement.
I learned my craft in that old church. I was lucky enough to have found a creative home at New Stage under the tutelage of the irreplaceable Ivan Ryder. His genius, along with that of Frank Haines (sets), gave Jackson a theatre experience it had no reason to expect. That’s not to say there wasn’t theatre in Jackson, there certainly was. Jackson Little Theatre was hugely successful, along with Millsaps and the remarkable Lance Goss.
But New Stage offered something else. It offered an edgier theatre that was not afraid to produce plays like Virginia Woolf, along with its first real mega-hit, the Cole Porter Review. I was in a ton of the plays in that old church, and in each one, I learned something from Ivan. And it wasn’t just that way for me, but for a lot of people. It was just extraordinary to have access to that kind of growth at that time in my life.
So, here we are now, in a terrific space with, again, stellar leadership. What remarkable growth on all counts. Thank you, Jane, Ivan, Frank, for lighting the torch, and to you, Francine, Bill, Dawn, and Richard for keeping it burning.
John Maxwell
