Posted by Terrence Dalton on Dec 09, 2020
The Rotary Club of Akron had the privilege of listening to Ali Miller and Chris Meyers from Playhouse Square at our Tuesday, December 8, 2020 weekly meeting. View the video by clicking here.
 
Chris has been employed with Playhouse Square for the past 18 years, the past 12 years as Sales Manager.  Ali is an Akron native and graduate of Firestone High School. Ali’s work experience includes the Akron Civic Theater, The Public Theater in New York City (famous for some little shows called A Chorus Line and Hamilton), Broadway.com and Broadway Across America in New York City, and finally a return to Ohio to work with Playhouse Square.  It was a very engaging presentation with multiple follow-up questions about the organization, its challenges, successes, etc.
 
Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City. Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s, the theaters were subsequently closed down, but were revived through a grassroots effort. Their renovation and reopening helped usher in a new era of downtown revitalization in Cleveland.
 
Playhouse Square is one of Broadway’s premier touring partners, made possible by the region’s enthusiastic Broadway audiences - the largest base of season tickets holders in the country (over 50,000), skilled labor force, knowledgeable and hard-working staff, dedicated volunteers, and beautiful venues. 
 
Playhouse Square is a Not-for-profit performing arts center whose mission is presenting and producing a wide variety of quality performing arts, advancing arts education and creating a destination that is a superior location for entertainment, business and residential living, thereby strengthening the economic vitality of the region.
 
 
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & EDUCATION
 
Playhouse Square understands its vital role as an educator in the community and is committed to providing arts learning opportunities of the highest quality to enrich the lives of students, families, teachers, and adults.
 
Since its inception in 1998, the Community Engagement & Education Department has offered thousands of events, workshops, classes and more, most with minimal or no fees, to people of all ages from all areas of Northeast Ohio.
 
Playhouse Square is proud to commit to arts education, providing a variety of free and low-cost programs dedicated to inspiring and invigorating people of all ages, perspectives, and abilities. As a result of the pandemic impact, Playhouse Square has modified their community education programming. 
 
Educators have been given rights to all nine shows that have been recorded.  Currently 900 classrooms have signed up and over 19,000 students have benefited.  In addition to the ability to view these shows in the classroom, there are also pre- and post- show activities for the students to participate in as part of their learning experience.
 
While Playhouse Square is known for the great performances that are produced to interested ticket holders, what is more impressive are the sensory-friendly programming that the Playhouse Square has implemented.  Their sensory-friendly initiative is dedicated to increasing access and inclusion for those with sensory needs including persons with autism.
 
Like many businesses, Playhouse Square has been impacted significantly as a result of COVID 19.  To date, they have had to cancel over 600 performances and have sustained a $7 million dollar loss.  They will be implementing a fund-raising campaign to help them continue to weather the pandemic.  Current plans call for a resumption of their programming in the Fall of 2021.
 
Playhouse Square has partnered with the University of Akron/EJ Thomas Hall for the past 5 years to share their Broadway Series.  Currently EJ Thomas has over 2500 ticket holders for the Broadway Series. This partnership will continue when the Broadway Series returns in the Fall of 2021.
 
To learn more about Playhouse Square and their numerous initiatives, growth plans, etc., I encourage everyone to go to their website www.playhouse.square.org.
 
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