New Home - Carolina Children's Theatre-Youth Arts Academy

We are Carolina Children's Theatre - Youth Arts https://Www.carolinachildrenstheatre.com

You may notice the longer name and there is a reason for that:)

After nine-years of serving our Triangle dramatic arts community, CCT has grown so much! Our name needed to reflect how we've changed and embraced all ages interested in exploring the wondrous sport of theatre.

I meant to write 'sport' because as anyone who has done a show knows, it's right up there with any endurance challenge!

From pre-production logistics, to scheduling rehearsals, teaching dance, music and drama and that's all before tech week!

Oh, don't get me started on the sprint of tech week!

Let's just leave it with this: Theatre is a marathon of artistic vision and creation that leaves everyone involved with an intense sense of accomplishment, sheer pride in learning new skills, bursting confidence and the joy of connecting with all involved - onstage and off.

So that's what our CCT family does - we make magic.

With the help of incredibly talented volunteers and the energy of our Youth, we learn how to make magic and then we perform it for our community. I've done this for years in New York, Melbourne, Australia, London and now North Carolina - for a reason. Yes, it's super fun and super challenging, but it is absolutely necessary to have homegrown art in our community for all the above reasons and I am honored to be a part of it.

Other people think so, too!

We won second place in the WRAL Voter's Choice Awards last year (Second only to the 2700-seat Durham Performing Arts Center;)

Soooooo.... We are an award-winning, family theatre company and arts academy which started at the Holly Springs Cultural Center and then the Fuquay Varina Arts Center and now we rent a studio in the First United Methodist Church.

With all this moving around, my husband, James, and I believed our theatre kids deserved and would be well-served with a home of their very own.

A place to learn, rehearse, perform, socialize and call our very own.

We saw a .5 acre plot in the commercial area of Fuquay-Varina - part of an old tobacco farm owned by the Beck and Sexton families and stretched miles in every direction. Two Tobacco drying barns were on the property - one almost 200 years old and one 100 years old (put together with square-headed, hand-made nails, no less).

Now, being originally from CT, I didn't see old falling apart tobacco barns, I saw a place to put on a show...

So, with the luck and grace of many, we were able to purchase the property and get to work on creating a 99-seat blackbox. (That's a theatre term that means multi-purpose and flexible. Literally a box that can be configured as needed with moveable seats and platforms for paramount creativity). This space will be for CCT-YAA to rehearse, teach, dance, sing, created backstage art and perform in. It will also be a space for our emerging artist community to use for events and rehearsals as well.

We are now at the point where we need to raise money for the plans - architectural and civil engineering plans - and permits.

It is estimated that the whole project will cost up to $500,000 - not a modest number for a modest 2000 sq ft building - but we need to start with $20,000. If we can raise this money, we can get the plans started that will encourage more people in our community to invest in our project.

We have a 3-pronged approach to this fundraising goal:

1) This GoFundMe page. Yeah!

2) A fundraising page on our ticket website - Booktix - which encourages people who buy tickets to our shows to add a bit more for our fundraising. We have raised over $800 this way and are so grateful.

3) The Triangle Talent Show. We created this celebration of Youth talent to raise awareness of the amazing arts in our community and all profits and donations will go directly to this building fund. So come to our show on October 18th @ 7pm at the Fuquay Varina Arts Center. Here is link to purchase tickets and to learn more:

https://cctheatre.booktix.com

Thank you to all who have helped make this show possible - especially the incredibly talented youth who auditioned and all who will be performing.

Thank you again for reading this and empowering our youth and community. We see CCT-YAA as a home to continue to inspire & empower young people for years to come.

Tired Oompa Loompas backstage of our Willy Wonka, Jr. show:)