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In the beginning …
One night in 1982 a few young people from Jay County, Indiana saw a production of “Godspell” at Anderson College. They were so taken with it that they felt compelled to bring the musical to their home town. Greg Ashley, who was a student at Anderson studying theater and vocal music at the time told Muncie Star reporter Larry Smith, “We were all talking about how we’d like to be in GODSPELL, and then we thought, ‘Why don’t we do it?’” There was no Center for the Arts, no Hall Memorial Theatre, no Art’s Place. There was no organization devoted to summer theatre. No bank account. No returning volunteers. No precedent.
But on July 22, 1982 at 8 pm a cast working under the hastily invented name of JAY COUNTY SUMMER YOUTH THEATRE gave the first of six performances of GODSPELL in a very warm and tiny auditorium in the Jay County Courthouse.
Between that night in 1982 and the final show in 2006, more than 500 people have been involved in nearly 40 actual productions and innumerable other public performances. Somewhere in the first few years the name was changed to the equally lengthy but less discriminatory JAY COUNTY SUMMER PERFORMANCE COMPANY. Then after its second ten years’ anniversary the name was changed again to what it ended up being known as, relatively simply as THE PERFORMANCE COMPANY.
As the Jay County Civic Theatre became stronger and began producing more and more shows, the reason for a separate PERFORMANCE COMPANY become less and less clear. After it became necessary to get liability insurance for each performance, it became more and more likely that
one of the troupes would be absorbed into the other. Eventually, Jay County Civic Theatre made the overture to purchase the name THE PERFORMANCE COMPANY. In a fine bit of symmetry, one of thelast shows THE PERFORMANCE COMPANY produced as an independent company was GODSPELL (for the third time).
There are scores of people we could congratulate and pat on the back for 24 years of success, but the simple truth of the matter is that THE PERFORMANCE COMPANY existed because of the musical GODSPELL, and because of He whose life it celebrates.
THE PERFORMANCE COMPANY may have ceased to exist as an institution, but our shows and performances will live on forever here and in the hearts and memories of all the cast and audience members.
