“I worked for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre for 17 years doing props, faux finish, and graphic art. That’s quite a lot, but basically meant that I counterfeited and committed forgery for a living! There would be a chair made from wood that I would have to make look like metal, then a couch with metal reinforcement I had to make it look like wood. I did scene design for their cabaret space and then for other smaller companies throughout Milwaukee.
I came back because I was born and raised here. The building our gallery space is in was originally built by my family and was originally a clothing department store. I was literally raised in the building. While I was living in Milwaukee, my father passed, and my mom and my brother and his family lived here. I also have a niece, who was four at the time, and she sent me a card in Milwaukee that said ‘Aunt Jill, please come home and play with me.’ You can’t say ‘no’ to something like that pulling at your heart!
At the Center for the Arts of Greater Lapeer, we have 64 live performances coming up in the next year. That includes family fun programming, which is a Saturday 2:30 show that we offer free of charge for families with small children with puppet shows, a musical from Detroit Opera, and the Three Little Pigs magic shows. The next age range we have is a program called The ‘816 Experience’, which is for ages eight to 16. That's the group where you're too old for the young children’s programming but too young for everything else. That programming happens on Friday nights and has things like Nerf Wars, where we turn the theatre into a battleground of Nerf! We have a guy who comes in with all the equipment, ammo, and blinds. He sets up throughout the theatre and they get to go for it. We also make giant bubbles in the theatre, and have a comedian and magician that comes in performs just for that age range.
For adults, we have something called the Showcase and Regional Legends Showcase Series which are acts that are nationally touring. They run from all different genres. In the past, we've had performances like Sisters Late Nite Catechism and The Three Redneck Tenors whose resumes are incredible.
The Regional Showcase is more Midwest touring shows and also Canada. I'm getting a lot of acts from Canada now, including comedians. We also have a Comedy Series which has stand-up comedians. The Legend Series is groups that perform specifically music from one band and we've had everything from Queen to Glen Campbell, to different country acts. Hopefully, there is something for everyone.
The other thing that happens in the summer is we have our youth theatre plays and those are produced by us.
Then the newest thing is turning the gallery into an immersive cabaret experience where we have a trio, set up round tables, dim the lights and have candles and twinkle lights.
For seniors, we have a Wednesday matinee for those that don't like to drive anymore or are retired and can come on Wednesday. Recently, we showed the classic movie Casablanca and had a good crowd.
The gallery exhibits usually run six to eight weeks. The theme this year was ‘Wild Thing’ but we tried to make that as broad based as possible. When people asked, I said, ‘It can be a wild animal. It can be your dog. It can be your grandkids.’ So, it's pretty open and the exhibit is made up of people from all over the community in all different mediums and different levels of expertise. It is juried in that they had to show at least three pieces of their art to get into the show. There's some fun stuff and it's really neat to see all the closeted artists in the community that come out, and the majority of the work is for sale. Or you have those that have just started in some cases. It’s their first time showing anything publicly, which is kind of cool to watch. We get a lot of first timers in their 50s, 60s, 70s and above.
Community Mental Health holds art classes here once a week. Currently, we have a showing of what they've done over the past year. The instructor has saved their artwork to showcase what they do. There's some amazing art up there, too.
Matt Modrack is one of the reasons why art is so important to Lapeer. He was the city planner when The Pix was up for sale, and he was very concerned with preventing it from becoming a drugstore or being torn down. In the late 1990s, he convinced the Mayor and City Commission to purchase the building with the idea of turning it into a live performance venue. It became a true community effort, where evenMatt was in here tearing off some of the acoustic curtains. Because this used to be a movie theatre with seats going all the way down to the screen, they built a stage. So, that is the movie screen.Matt saved the building. Downtown Lapeer was going through some really rough times, but he knew both the arts and saving our historical buildings would help.
Then, five years after The Pix was running and successful, they purchased the building next door and turned that into the art gallery. The art gallery was run by the City and the DDA for five more years and then in 2012, the merger joined the gallery and the theatre together to have it run by one board.
The Center for the Arts of Greater Lapeer unites the community. Because we live in a digital world, we don’t have many opportunities for a shared experience. We’re not all watching the same three channels anymore. When I was a kid going to school, everybody was watching Happy Days and talked about Happy Days. Why? Because there wasn’t anything else to watch. The theatre is one of the last places we can really experience community in a single moment.
That helps the entire community, too. My job is to get people to come through our doors, but in doing so, we're also promoting the rest of the community by saying, ‘Hey, come to a show, and while you’re here, do some shopping and dinner before, catch the show, and you’ll still get home before dark.’ We try to partner with local restaurants and give out gift certificates. If they sponsor us, we give out gift certificates to get people to grab some dinner before the show. It's worked quite well just in the 10 years that I've been here, because I've watched as more and more storefronts have opened.”
– Jill Lynn Lyons, Executive Director of Center for the Arts of Greater Lapeer
Written by Phil Eich, Storyville
This project was created in collaboration with the DDA (Downtown Development Authority) & Michigan Main Street for Center for the Arts