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WPCNR STAGE DOOR. By John F. Bailey. January 6, 2005: The Three Phantoms, a popular road show featuring local former lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, Westchester’s Craig Schulman, will be the headline fund-raising event of the season to give the White Plains Performing Arts Center a new start, according to the White Plains Performing Arts Center Box office.
The gala is the first by the White Plains Performing Arts Center Board of Directors to get the troubled White Plains Performing Arts Center the financial base to steady its creative ship. Promotions inviting Westchester’s glitterati to the Gala are reported in the process of preparation.
The WPPAC Box Office confirmed to WPCNR that “The Three Phantoms” would be playing for one night only on March 20. Ticket information is not yet available. Highlights of the key fundraiser, seen by many as the launch of a new direction and start for the beleagured, financially troubled theater, are not yet available.
Mr. Schulman created The Three Phantoms a decade ago with Mr. Gray and Mr. Groenendaal, and has been taking it on tour playing to excellent crowds. Prior to coming to the WPPAC March 20, Mr. Schulman and his fellow Phantoms will be performing in Hawaii, Phoenix, Shreveport, and Youngstown, Ohio. Schulman has the distinction of having played three of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s unforgettable leads, The Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, Jean Valjean in Les Miserables and the troubled Dr. Jekyll in Jekyll and Hyde. More on Mr. Schulman’s colorful career can be found at www.craigschulman.com.
The Road Back?
White Plains Performing Arts Center was reported by Tony Stimac to be $400,000 in the red for the 2005-2006 season thus far at a Common Council meeting in October, and awaits at this time an infusion of $100,000 in cash from Super Developer Louis Cappelli, and an additional $100,000 in funding, that Mr. Cappelli, a member of the Board of Directors promised to raise. The Common Council at the request of Mr. Stimac, voted to give the theater $100,000 to contribute to bringing down the deficit in a November meeting, to meet Mr. Cappelli’s “match challenge.”
The Gala had been originally postponed from its intended date in October, due at that time, according to Tony Stimac, Artistic Director of the theater, to a conflict with the White Plains Public Library fundraiser. Anyway arrangements were finalized, according to the box office spokesperson Tuesday to schedule “The Phantoms.”
Girls Room and Charlie’s Place Postponed. New Entertainments Searched.
The White Plains Performing Arts Center Box Office also reported Thursday that the next scheduled productions, The Girls Room, starring the Broadway legend, Phyllis Newman, scheduled to play March 3 to 12 and the play in development, Charlie’s Place scheduled to run April 28 to May 7, both as part of the WPPAC Subscription Series have been postponed.
The postponement apears to be a playing out of reports from Actors Equity in October that the WPPAC and the Helen Hayes Theatre Company was cancelling their season, which was denied by Mr. Stimac to WPCNR at the time the Actors Equity report was relayed to WPCNR.
A member of the Board of Directors of the theater told WPCNR Wednesday that the WPPAC management is at this time in the process of scheduling replacement productions for The Girls Room and Charlie’s Place, relying on non-Actors Equity groups, or educational groups.
Rental productions such as Playgroup Theater will continue to play the WPPAC as scheduled, and they are drawing very well, according the Director, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Two calls to Tony Stimac by WPCNR requesting more details on the The Three Phantoms performance and the new shows being contemplated have not yet been returned.
