Curtain

An encore for OCT

Filed Under Country Curtain | Posted on December 15, 2007

Trustees for Central Florida Community College have a chance to raise the curtain on a new chapter in the cultural life of our community today when they are expected to vote on a proposal to donate 14 acres of land the college controls to the Ocala Civic Theatre.The land, located amid the 44-acre Appleton Cultural Center, which includes the Appleton Museum, the Pioneer Garden Club and the Ocala Civic Theatre, would be used to construct a new 600- to-700-seat performance facility to accommodate the ever-growing popularity of this civic and artistic jewel. The new theater would serve as home to the civic theater’s main stage productions, with the current 400-seat building being utilized for OCT’s many children’s and educational programs.The CFCC trustees, as caretakers of the Appleton Cultural Center, can - and should - approve the $1-a-year, 99-year lease of the parcel. The land donation not only would allow the needed expansion of one of Florida’s premier community theaters, but as college President Charles Dassance put it, would serve as a special commemoration of the 50th anniversary of CFCC, which it serves as Ocala/Marion County’s cultural guiding light.OCT, for its part, is well deserving. It has grown into Florida’s second-largest community theater, with a budget of $1.4 million - a remarkable difference from the $100,000 budget it managed back in 1988 when the current theater opened. Of that impressive amount, just $20,000 comes from public coffers, a grant from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Oh, and OCT is debt free, speaking to the prudent fiscal stewardship of the theater’s board.But the dollars and cents aren’t the most remarkable numbers when telling the OCT success story. When it celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, OCT will have presented productions and programs to more than 1 million people, said Mary Britt, OCT’s longtime executive director. Moreover, OCT has far and away the largest number of season ticket holders of any community theater in Florida with 5,200. There’s more. Last year alone, it presented 429 different theatrical and musical programs and 157 theater workshops, and enjoyed the services of more than 400 volunteers, while over the past two years more than 1,000 children participated in OCT programs.”They take the word ‘community’ in community theater very seriously - that the things we’re involved in should reflect the interests of the community,” Britt said of OCT’s board.OCT makes Ocala/Marion County a better place, and for that it deserves an encore in the way of a new theater. The CFCC trustees can start the applause today by voting to give the land to OCT, and the community can join in by supporting a future campaign to raise up to $10 million for the new theater building.We’re confident both are good and lasting investments - for OCT and, more importantly, for a community that for nearly two decades has reveled in performance after wonderful performance and witnessed the blossoming of one of the nation’s finest and most successful community theaters.Both CFCC and OCT deserve our applause. CFCC for once again being poised to lead in the cultural arts arena, and the OCT for keeping the theater vibrant and growing in our community. To both we are grateful and proud.

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