YELLOW SPRINGS, OH — For eight decades, the Little Art Theater, which was once a bank, has been an important part of this community serving as a cinema, a venue for live theater, and as a church over the years. The theater has been featuring indie films, which will continue, and plans to add themed film events and showings of classic movies.

The theater received notice of its 501(c)(3) status this month, as a milestone in its 80-year history as a single-screen movie theater. While Jenny Cowperthwaite-Ruka, who has managed and then owned the theater for 23 years, resisted the change at first, she has found a group of people who care deeply enough about the theater to put their energy into insuring its perpetual survival. McGhee is the first president of the theater’s board of directors, and Maureen Lynch, a local movie goer and Friend of the Little Art, is the board’s vice-president, in addition to board members Laura Carlson, Roger Reynolds, Mark French, Mary Kay Smith and Alice Earl Jenkins. Cowperthwaite-Ruka, who is now the theater’s executive director, thinks of the nonprofit status as a link between the theater and the community that loves and supports it.

“I think of it as a gift to the community — it’s an opportunity for people to really feel like it is their theater,” she said in a recent interview.

Additional details in the Yellow Springs News.