News

Work begins to convert former movie house into workshops

CAMILLE FIOTI Times Leader Correspondent

DURYEA -- After three years of rehearsing and performing in a variety of local venues, KISS (Kids Innovating Stage and Sound) Theatre Company has finally found a place to call home.

click image to enlarge

Janara Koehler, Corrine Matusiak, Mike O’Malley and Sarah Blamire rehearse for the upcoming KISS fundraiser.

Aimee Dilger/The Times Leader

click image to enlarge

Members of KISS play a theater game at the theater in Duryea to ready for an upcoming fundraiser.

Aimee Dilger/The Times Leader

Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store

Because of increased enrollment, the nonprofit performing arts organization needed to find a place large enough to accommodate it. The vacated cinemas at Wyoming Valley Mall fit the bill.

The group has signed a five-year lease with the option to renew for an additional five years and plans to move in shortly after Thanksgiving.

The mall cinemas had been closed for 18 months when Indiana-based Great Escapes Theater took over the site in 2004. Less than two years later, the theater abruptly closed its doors.

“We’d been searching for a place to call home,” said Jill Hertel, co-chair of KISS’s Community/Parent Advisory Council. “We looked at churches, but nothing was going to accommodate our size,” she said, adding that it would also cost too much to bring the old buildings up to code.

The KISS Theatre Company offers a comprehensive after-school performing arts curriculum, which includes voice, dance, staging, costuming and lighting. At the end of the program, the children perform a full-scale musical.

When KISS was formed in 2006, 17 children signed up for its program, said Hertel. Enrollment in subsequent productions has steadily grown. The largest number of children who enrolled for one production, “Beauty and the Beast,” was 80. There are now 65 rehearsing for the January production of “The Wizard of OZ.”

The group has paid rent at each of its venues, which has included Arts YOUniverse in Dallas, the CYC in Wilkes-Barre and currently the Phoenix Theater in Duryea.

“We pay $2,000 for each production at Phoenix,” Hertel said. “That’s a considerable cost.”

Donations from the community are the only way the group can afford to renovate the site, said Glynis Koehler, also a co-chairperson of the Community/Parent Advisory Council.

“It’s through generous support that we’re able to move into this facility and convert it into a functioning space for the theater group,” she said.

Construction is under way to customize the four-cinema theater, which will offer multiple workshops for different age groups and interests.

When finished, the site will include a new stage for productions, a dance studio and a space for lighting and other technical equipment. The screen for movies will remain in one of the cinemas, which might possibly be rented for private parties, Koehler said.

A silent auction is the one major fundraiser KISS undertakes each year. This year’s silent auction will be held Saturday at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs.

“We are working on various grants, but we have to completely depend on donations,” Koehler said. “You wouldn’t believe all of the stuff it takes because we are starting from scratch.”

Hertel and Koehler said they have heard mostly positive support from parents about the new location. “Most parents are very excited about it,” Hertel said, adding that the location is conveniently located for parents driving from Pittston, the Back Mountain, Mountain Top and the Nanticoke area.

“They can drop their kids off and go shopping.”