The Colquitt County Arts Center is the first to recognize the bounty of talent we have in our community. Through our classes in art, pottery, music and dance and our theater program we see young and old discover their gifts and talents and have watched many enter into careers in their artistic field.

We are a community Arts Center and we welcome suggestions and entertain ideas from community members to enhance our programming and further the reach of the arts in our community and beyond.

In early spring last year Mickey Key came to my office and said he had an idea for a show. He laid out his idea for a salute to the Grand Ole Opry with a tip of the hat to musicians in our community who have contributed to the country music scene. As a person with a strong country music heritage – I can claim that for a short time Tammy Wynette was my aunt, my dad sang back up for Freddie Fender and was once a talent scout for Columbia Records, and my aunt Martha Carson is a member of the Grand Ole Opry – I was excited about the possibility of the Arts Center Theater partnering with Mickey to create this show. Mickey offered it as a fund raiser and when I told him we were looking at about $90,000 in technical upgrades for the auditorium we agreed that was the direction we would go.

So we went to work. Mickey and the Arts Center recruited band members and talent. The Arts Center made arrangements for Stacey Rutledge to paint the fabulous backdrop on the stage, provided costumes, rehearsal space, staging, handled a major portion of the marketing and tickets sales as part of our partnership with Mickey.

The end result was a fabulous production loaded with talent including Mickey and his wife Bobbie, and son, Matt Key; Scott Turner; David and Noah Hawkins; Ryan Diers; Michael Ryce; Steve Fritz; Melissa and Larry Sims; Mimi Bair; Amber Schwartz; Stacie DeRosso; Erica York; Scott Graham; and Meg Bishop that sold out two performances and an encore performance before we even had the chance to market it publicly and we still had to turn people away.

The Arts Center truly cannot thank Mickey and the cast and crew enough for contributing their talents to such a successful event and fundraiser for the Arts Center. I am going to be honest: When Mickey approached me about taking the show to the Courthouse Square for a free performance, I resisted. My thoughts immediately went to those we charged $15 a ticket and those we turned away and I thought it would be in poor taste to give the show away. After talking to a few folks whose opinions I greatly admire and whose wisdom I respect, I changed my way of thinking.

While the Arts Center had a very big hand in making this production the success that it was here at the Arts Center, the bottom line is this is Mickey Key’s production and he and the fabulous talent that makes this production so awesome can perform it when and where he wishes. The Arts Center has supported Mickey in this effort by offering the costumes for use again. We were unable to offer the group rehearsal space as every corner of the Arts Center is in use for other programming and rehearsals for four shows between August and December.

I do hope you will grab your lawn chairs and join the rest of the community on the Courthouse Square for Music under the Magnolia this Saturday at 7 p.m. and enjoy the show. We all should be very proud of the talent and wish them well as they look at taking this production to other communities as well.

Break A Leg!

Connie Fritz

Executive director

Colquitt County Arts Center