CoMMA packs in the performances

By: | Morganton News Herald
Published: April 08, 2009

There's no time for spring cleaning at CoMMA for the next few months. April, May and June are traditionally Morganton's performing arts center's busiest time of the year.
Certainly the big name shows like "Annie" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" get a good deal of attention, and we want that to happen for it helps to fill the seats. Although there are a few more MainStage Morganton concerts yet to be presented, the 'meat and potatoes' of our staff efforts are now concentrated intensely as the upcoming high school band concerts, dance recitals, graduations and other local stage events rise up and receive their due notice and attention.
I did not arrive on the scene in Morganton until 1986. I know back then and even before Western Piedmont Community College usually held its commencement exercise outdoors on the campus green. The band concerts were most likely held in the school's gymnasium or in a stadium, and most of the dance recitals were staged at the old Morganton High School.
Today all of these events receive a very different treatment. Tickets are issued and sold via a state of the art box office with regular business hours. CoMMA's Blue Blazer/AARP ushers assist guests to their reserved seats, and best of all — there's air conditioning being. For the WPCC, the threat of rain is no longer an issue, so monitoring the Weather Channel is a long gone thing of the past.
At first it was thought that CoMMA might be 'overkill' for some of these local event groups. Not so. In fact, every group has risen to the occasion by enhancing what they were already doing so well. Audiences are comfortable and safe. Trained lighting and sound technicians and stage crews make certain that everyone can see and hear in a quality fashion.
One anecdote — you know I can't get by without one now and then. After CoMMA had been in business for about ten years, a former Freedom High School student came up to me one night at a concert and introduced herself. She had been in the FHS Band back in the late 1980's, and had played in some of the first spring concerts the band had performed at CoMMA. In the years that followed through college, graduate school, and some professional touring, she told me then that she had yet to perform in a theatre as nice and well run as CoMMA.
I hadn't thought much about that until last week as I watched the final scenes of "Mockingbird," and one of the actors backstage whispered to me that they always love coming to Morganton for it's by far the nicest theater on their tour.
Morganton has a lot of good things going for it, even now when there are so many challenges and struggles facing us. We don't have to think back to far to know this and to never take any of it for granted.
So we can all 'put on a happy face,' this weekend as we hunt and find those colorful Easter eggs, and then we will see you at "Bye Bye Birdie" on Wednesday, February 15. Your buying a ticket helps the Burke Council on Alcoholism and Chemical Dependency too, so that's just one more great reason to be a CoMMA-dian (our new word of the week).

CoMMA packs in the performances

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