While being painted, the Madisonville mural was almost completely obscured by four levels of sturdy scaffolding. Now it is unveiled and the mural is an ocean of color and design. With bright colors and images inspired by the sea, while waves crowning the mural rise above the top edge of the building to create a whimsical horizon for the new Madisonville Arts Center (MAC). The other stunning component of the MAC are the mosaics columns set at the building's entryway, a multicolored wash made of a variety of different tile and glass fragments, that swirl around to welcome visitors.

 

The MAC is lucky to have this mural, as is the whole community. Antoine Trammell, a Madisonville resident and mural Apprentice told me, "Everybody pays more attention to this building. Nobody worried about the building before now--I didn't--but now people are interested."

 

 

 

The folks behind the Madisonville Arts Center have three words of advice for anyone wanting to clear a neighborhood of an unsavory element: Johann Sebastian Bach.

 

While electricians and plumbers and such are working away inside to get the center ready for an opening early in 2007, center mastermind Dan Dermody and his partners embarked on Operation Bach-Off, which blasts the best of Bach 24/7.

 

When a plan works, don't fix it, and Dermody promises that the concert will continue with no end in sight. The center is on Whetsel Avenue near Madison Road.

 

 

Community theater picks the best

ACT-Cincinnati, Southwestern Ohio's association of community theaters, celebrated the 2005-2006 season last weekend with its annual awards banquet and showcase of excerpts. Local excerpt winners move on to a statwide competition in September.

Two area community theater veterans were honored for their longtime contributions:

Pat Furterer is the 2006 winner of the Art Rouse Award for general support of community theater. Dan Dermody won the Mario Pitocco Award for technical achievement.

Furterer's nomination defined her as an "educator, motivator, organizer, fundraiser, adviser, visionary, encourager and ambassador" for 52 years.

She began Loveland Stage Company in 1977 by placing an ad in the paper and held the first production on her deck. Among the cast was Ann Randolph, who just wrapped a run of her one-woman show "Squeeze Box" at Playhouse in the Park.

 

Over the last 26 years Furterer has volunteered for every one of Loveland's 59 productions, including producer (9), publicity (20), usher (12), construction (6) and backstage crew (17).

 

Dermody has designed and built sets for Footlighters, Cincinnati Music Theatre, Falcon Theatre, Village Players of Fort Thomas, Stagecrafters and his home base Mariemont Players - 52 shows in all.

These days his primary focus is on the Community Arts Institute and Madisonville Art Center, due to open in 2007.

 

Cincinnati Music Theatre's "42nd Street" and Drama Workshop's "Swing!" both won huge bouquets of Orchid awards from ACT-Cincinnati, with 18 and 17 awards respectively. Neither production competed for the chance to go to the statewide Ohio Community Theatre Association competition, OCTAFest.

 

Cincinnati area theaters that will continue on to state competition are: "Story Theatre" by Tri-County Players, "Visiting Mr. Green" by Mariemont Players and "Is There Life After High School?" by Middletown Lyric Theatre. Alternate is "The Compleat Works of William Shakespear" by Milford Theatre Guilde.

 

 

Madisonville Arts Center is a go! Or it will be Wednesday, when Cincinnati City Council officially sings off on a $50,000 grant that will put the new neighborhood center, including theater, in business in the fall.

Council's Arts, Culture, Tourism and Marketing Committee announced five grants totaling $275,000 at its first meeting of the year, held Thursday.

 

The committee also put forward a motion for a $100,000 downtown marketing grant earmarked for the reopening celebrations of Fountain Square/Goverment Square later this year. The money would come from the Arts Capital Fund.

 

Four of the grants are for neighborhood arts initiatives: Covedale Center for the Performing Arts, $50,000; Kennedy Heights Arts Center, $50,000; Madisonville Arts Center, $50,000; and Price Hill Historical Society, $25,000. The fifth is a $100,000 appropriation to continue to stabilize Showboat Majestic, the nation's only showboat operating on the inland waterways.

 

"To restore and improve neighborhoods, with arts and culture as a centerpiece of that effort," is imperative, committee chairman Jim Tarbell says.

 

Each grant recipient is a grass-roots effort that has high community interest and volunteerism, he adds, and "in all of these cases, each is located in a neighborhood's business district, the backbone of most neighborhoods."

 

Madisonville is an example of how the investment works. The $50,000 grant is the second from the city. The arts and culture committee made a $75,000 award in 2004. The new grant, and a $40,000 no-interest loan from Indian Hill Church, means Madisonville Arts Center organizers have raised well over the $267,000 needed to complete its first phase - which includes a 120-seat theater opening in autumn.

 

Ed Cohen, who with Dan Dermody is driving the Madisonville dream, says theater folks can expect phones to ring in the coming weeks as planners call to chat about potential programming with artists "who can look six months down the road."

 

Building permits are expected to be in hand by the end of the month. That's when the (pro bono) design work by GBBN Architects will begin to become reality.

 

Ideally, autumn programming will include performances and a satellite location for College-Conservatory of Music's Preparatory program. Phase two can wait until the doors are open "and we have something to show someone," Cohen says. "People want to see something, or it loses momentum."