History
Patterson Repertory Theatre started as a summer project in the summer of 2003. Tori Lee Scoles observed that the residents of Patterson had to drive to other towns to enjoy theatre. As an experiment, Tori approached Patterson Parks and Recreation Director Adrienne Chaney with a proposal of mounting a summer acting workshop for teenagers in the park. In the mean time, Colton Dennis was expressing his own desire to direct a play in Patterson. Colton chose a musical that both Tori and he loved, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
On the first day of workshop, only one young girl showed up, but she had a friend. That friend had a friend and so on, until the Youth Theatre Workshop had 10-30 participants.
After A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Colton and Tori changed Patterson Community Theatre to the year round Patterson Repertory Theatre. They applied for non-profit status.
The first shows with the Youth Theatre were in the small park where the old Del Puerto Hotel used to stand (now it's the new City Hall) with only parents and passers by as audience members. The young actors mounted small one act plays, The Big Black Box and The Pot Boiler before moving into their new digs at Patterson High School Auditorium.
Patterson Rep now has an annual Art and Wine Gala that keeps growing in its size and attendance each year.
Read more about this topic: Patterson Repertory Theatre
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)