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For Warner Crocker, the best moment in a Wayside Theatre productiont comes after the final curtain, when the show is over and the audience is filing out the front doors. He loves standing outside, shaking hands with the folks on the sidewalk like a preacher after Sunday services. For Crocker, extending the theater's reach into the community.is the mission of Wayside.
And it's this philosophy that has allowed him, in the two years since he took helm of the 40-year-old professional theater company in Middletown, Va., to retire its longstanding debt and diversify its revenue stream. By bringing more non-union players and acting interns into the company, initiating acting classes for children, extending the theater's season from an elongated summer to year-round, and promoting outreach programming bringing theater into schools, Crocker has constructed a theater arts conglomerate from what was a small, rural theater with risky plumbing, insufficient air conditioning and an ancient electrical system.
Crocker's plans go further, with the prospect of multiple venues once a planned community cultural center at Lord Fairfax Community College gets off the drawing board. The multi-million dollar center, which will combine performance, office and classroom space, was conceived about the time Crocker arrived at Wayside, and has been undergoing design revisions based on available funding. As a resident theater company, Wayside will use the center for its larger productions, leaving the existing 180-seat space as a workshop and incubator for smaller pieces, including children's productions.
As Crocker sees it, the center at Lord Fairfax will allow him to attract more expensive technical talent to Wayside, since these lighting, set and costume designers will also serve as adjunct faculty to the community college.
"You see the potential there," Crocker said. "It's [community college President Dr. Marilyn Beck]'s vision that not only...