In July 1994, Oglethorpe Community Theatre put on its first ever performance, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. Now, three decades later, OCT has become Arts! Oglethorpe, and we are thrilled to announce our 30th season!
This season we’ll have a full run of shows from February to June, and opportunities throughout the year to get involved with Arts!O in other ways.
In February 2025, join us for Love Letters by A.R. Gurney, directed by Penny Miller. In April 2025, we’ll present I and You by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Chris Say. And to close out our 30th season, we’re excited to announce Shrek The Musical by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, directed by Penny Miller and Bly Hartley, going up in June 2025.
In addition to this great run of shows, you’ll notice we’ve updated our website. We’re excited to show off our new logo, designed by A!O alum Sarah Miller. Thanks, Sarah!
We’re also taking this time to announce our next fundraising effort: 30 for 30. As you may know, over the years we’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore the historic Crawford School house into a safe and usable facility. As a result, we’ve got a fantastic small theater space for the many performances you’ve enjoyed over the years. We’d love to turn our efforts to the upstairs auditorium, but in order to do that we first need to finish the renovations on the first floor.
The west-facing side of the Crawford School holds our green room for actors to get into costume and makeup, and our workroom for our crew to build the sets. These backstage spaces are vital to our productions, and they need some TLC. Raising the funds to complete the work on the behind-the-scenes rooms will get us in a much better position to begin work on the upstairs stage.
Donations made this year to our 30 for 30 campaign will be used to bring the west side of our building into the 21st century. We’re setting an ambitious goal of $30,000, but we know it can be achieved. After all, if just 1,000 people donated $30, we’ve got it in the bag!