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Old Brick Playhouse requests support from commission

The Inter-Mountain photo by Tim MacVean Old Brick Playhouse Executive Director Missy McCollam makes a presentation to the Randolph County Commission about services provided by the organization and makes a request for financial support.

ELKINS — A local non-profit organization made a presentation to the Randolph County Commission outlining the services they provide while asking for financial support.

During the public comment portion of the Thursday meeting, Old Brick Playhouse Executive Director Missy McCollam made the request and spoke about the positive impact of a relatively new art therapy program offered by the organization to residents of Elkins Rehabilitation and Care Center.

“We do art therapy at ERCC and we work on the memory unit. We’ve been doing this for about 10 months. I had one of the patients on the memory or Alzheimer’s units. I went down to get her and said ‘Do you want to come participate in the activity?’ and she said ‘No,’ but I said ‘Well, we have cookies,’ then she said ‘Okay, I’ll come,'” McCollam said.

“This is someone who is not verbal normally, just says very short segments. We were doing a singing session and I played the song ‘Bicycle Built for Two,’ and she sang every word which was more than they had heard her speak in 10 years. When I started to leave, she said ‘You found my heart,’ which is really moving to me.”

McCollam added that Old Brick Playhouse caters to individuals of all ages, with their youngest artist being 4 years old and oldest being 103.

“My goal when I came back to Elkins was to have arts programs for every generation in our community and we have successfully done that,” McCollam said.

McCollam said the program has an economic impact on the community and positively affects quality of life for residents with a number of programs, including performing at elementary schools.

“We do touring shows in elementary schools. To date, we have performed for 2.5 million kids in West Virginia and on the east coast since 1992,” she said.

She added their work with providing actors for themed Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad excursion trains entertains visitors while also providing Old Brick Playhouse employees with job training.

“We work in collaboration with the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad on the Polar Express, the Elf Limited and murder mysteries,” she said. “To date, we have attracted more than 119,000 people to our area. Yearly, that number increases because Warner Brothers requires us to increase our capacity yearly and the tickets are almost sold out for this year. The kids and adults that work on those trains are local artists and high school and middle school students.

“Last year we had 72 employees that worked on that project so for those employees we provide job training and we provide work experience attached to Warner Brothers, so when they leave they can say ‘I worked in collaboration with Warner Brothers,'” McCollam added.

Additional opportunities available at the facility including after-school and literacy programs.

“We also have after-school programs in summer which engage 350 kids and we have 4,500 alumni from our programs,” she said. “We also have a literacy program called ‘Acting Up’ and we’ve had about 650 kids go through that.”

The Old Brick Playhouse has received a number of accolades from the work they have done in the community and across the state.

“Last year, our train at Cass was voted the fourth best holiday train in the United States and we’ve sold about 4,000 tickets to that in two years,” she said.

McCollam closed by saying her goal is to work more closely with county officials to promote economic development.

“Our hope is to provide cultural tourism opportunities for people who come to Elkins and to train our students to do that,” McCollam said. “We have been invited to the White House twice and been awarded as one of the top 15 arts programs in the United States, so I would like to collaborate more with our county and we would like to work with you more on economic development because, as you know, one of the key components that our governor is promoting is cultural tourism and I think that Old Brick plays an integral part of that now.”

The Old Brick Playhouse has served the community for 28 years, McCollam added.

Due to the funding request not being an agenda item for the meeting, no action was taken by commissioners.

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