BUCKHANNON – The Colonial Arts Center Board will have to reschedule several Buckhannon Community Theatre productions due to ongoing construction.

The CAC board discussed the delay as well as the appointment of a full-time managing director for the Colonial Arts Center during their May 3 meeting. Following an executive session, CAC Board president and executive producer for the BCT, said the board plans to make an offer to one candidate.

“Among our candidates that we’ve interviewed, we have a pending offer that will be extended to one of the candidates and that will be vetted with that candidate,” Waltz said. “If we feel that that person wishes to proceed, we will present that to council on Thursday (May 5). If the person does not wish to proceed, we will likely revisit extending our search.”

Waltz said several BCT productions will most likely have to be rescheduled to accommodate the ongoing construction at the CAC.

“Just like everybody else, we’ve just struggled to get shows moving,” he said. “Our board met this week and we’ll be providing some updates to our calendar and schedule potentially, but our board has not approved those updates yet. We will continue with the ‘Frozen Jr.’ musical, but we were going to do it as camp and we may not be able to sustain that, so it may just be a show and that’ll happen in July.”

“A 50th Golden Anniversary Celebration,” which was scheduled for June 3-4, will be moved to the fall – possibly October or November.

“The reason for that is twofold: one is to have the most availability of talent that we can for that show but secondly, to not put pressure on the finishing of the space,” Waltz said. “We believe for that anniversary fundraiser to really work, people need to be able to come to the building and see it finished, so that’s the idea. We will continue to keep ‘Clue’ in our portfolio of shows for the fall.”

A previous My Buckhannon article went over the details of the upcoming BCT shows making a return after a hiatus due to COVID-19.

The Colonial Theatre renovation project is a three-way collaboration between the City of Buckhannon, ART26201 and Buckhannon Community Theatre. In addition, the city owns the space, so when it opens, the center will operate as a publicly funded entity.

According to previous stories, in January 2017, the city purchased the historic Colonial Theatre – which had most recently housed a string of bars – for $60,000 from property owner Catherine Cuppari. The same year, the city was awarded a $102,000 West Virginia Division Culture and History grant and two years later in 2019, received another $67,000 grant from the W.Va. Department of Arts, Culture and History.

A number of other public and private businesses and entities, including FirstEnergy Corp., have financially supported the project.