Comments from TrudyL

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TrudyL
TrudyL commented about State Theater on Nov 22, 2006 at 8:10 am

Great picture Don. However, why does it say State Theater Tacoma Washington??? The State is in Olympia!

You should post a new picture now that much of the restoration of the marquee is complete. We are still working on the neon but the paint and electrical has made a huge difference.

Harlequin recently received a $20K matching grant from West Coast Bank for the Enhancement Campaign. If you or anyone you know were planning on contributing to the restoration of the State, now is the time!

TrudyL
TrudyL commented about Freeing the Phoenix on Nov 22, 2006 at 7:50 am

The State Theater project is going well. We have reached the $400K mark in the $1M campaign. We also just received a $20K matching grant from West Coast Bank. If you know anyone who was planning to contribute, now is the time!

We’ve recently had the marquee re-finished and repainted and it looks great. We also had the wiring redone as it was completely fried. The lights are now back on. Our tech wizard is now working on getting the neon on the marquee working again. Looks like it might be a dead transformer.

Hope you all are still coming to see shows. We need your support as always.

TrudyL
TrudyL commented about State Theater on Dec 21, 2005 at 7:21 am

Ken – face it, The State Theater is now a live theater. It is no longer set up to play movies. Not saying that it NEVER will, but at this time it is home to the only small professional live producing theater between Tacoma and Portland…and doing a fine job too.

Constantly saying it should be a movie theater is fine – but it is not one. No one else – your friend in Centralia too – took the money and effort to save this theater. You should be thanking Harlequin Productions rather than complaining.

Move on.

Why not go help the Olympia Film Festival restore the Capitol Theater. It too is a fantastic old movie theater and it is falling apart from lack of interest by the owner to improve it.

ps – good for Opera Pacifica. I’m so glad the community opera company can has the kind of funds and talent it takes to run two separate kinds of entertainment out of one venue. More power to them!

TrudyL
TrudyL commented about Freeing the Phoenix on Dec 21, 2005 at 7:08 am

Well Ken, it’s hard to do live theater with neon cancelling out the stage lighting. Also – for live theater – high ceilings are tough on acoustics – not to mention the heating/cooling situation.

If you have any suggestions about how to cure the ‘transient situation’ please contact the City of Olympia. They would be very appreciative of any help they could get to ‘clean up’ the downtown core. Not just on the corner of 4th & Washington but the entire area has this problem. Though I have to say, it has been MUCH less of a problem since we started piping classical music out front. In the last 8 months I have rarely seen anyone even hanging around our lobby.

We don’t use the freestanding lobby as it is #1 – not heated! #2 – not set up to run a live-theatrical box office. We’ve tried to come up with some ways to use it. For now, we preserve it because it is a beautiful piece of movie-theater history and makes the theater look great.

Any time you have any suggestions on how we can improve our theater we love to hear them! Keep ‘em coming. Send us some money too then we can actually afford to make improvements!

T.