The Shelby County Players brought their talent to the Strand with their production of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.  

The audiences delighted in the antics of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and the Peanuts gang.   This musical was fun for all.

Below is director Lora Norris on opening night:

The Strand Theatre is having fun in July. As this month is winding down, we are tickled that we broke our single month attendance record. Normally a theatre like ours would do something like that during the traditional season September thru May. But we had to be different and accomplish the milestone in the middle of the summer!

The Shelby County Players are helping the record attendance numbers with their performances of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown. This fun musical was performed on Thursday and Friday nights. You can still make it to the performance on either Saturday Night July 30th at 7:30pm or Sunday July 31st at 2:00pm. You will enjoy the antics and songs of the Peanuts gang performed on the Strand stage. Please support live theatre in Shelby County.

With good attendance follows a need to replenish our supplies. We expect everyone to be wondering about the world wide coconut shortage (we talked about this several months ago in our weekly emails). There is good news, the price of our coconut oil for the popcorn has fallen about 6 percent. As the markets around the world come back to normal production levels, we hope to see the price return to its original level.

The Strand made a change in our popcorn this month. Our normal round popcorn tubs, which we sell for only $3.00, we changed to a square tub. Both containers are 85 ounces. We made the change for several reasons….the first (and most important reason) is the cost is less than half. After seeing our oil over double in price, we had to do something to maintain our low price for popcorn. Our new bucket works for the Strand because we do not use butter in our popcorn. It is perfect for our use. Even though we know that the size is the same as our old bucket, we had someone challenge that fact. So we did a test. To our surpise our new bucket actually holds MORE popcorn. We think it is a win for everyone.

What isn’t a win is when the popcorn ends up all over the auditorium floor. We have a specialized tool for this, an electric leaf blower. It has gotten well used this month. Our community has worked very hard to provide this historic venue as a jewel to use. In order to keep our jewel sparkley, we spend a tremendous about of volunteer time cleaning the theatre. Even with the aid of power tools, it is still a big job, repeated over 120 times per year. We are slowly getting our audience to respect the theatre and minimize the trash. We will let you in on a little secret: the cleanest patrons are by far the Heavy Metal Rock and Roll crowd. For whatever reason, they leave and the theatre is spotless. We hope to continue to encourage good theatre and performance etiquette for our patrons.

We have the Shelby County Players finishing this weekend followed by the Science of Magic on Monday August 1st at 11:00am. It will be a busy and happy few days at the Strand. We hope you can make it to the musical and the magic show!

Thank you for the support. In these very difficult times we hope that you will find the Strand to be an oasis away from every day problems. For the Strand volunteers, all our worries seem to disappear when we get to the theatre. We hope to see you at the Strand!

We are thrilled that patrons from near and far come to the Strand.   Sometimes (as was the case for the Shelby County Players’ production of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown)  the urge to get to the theatre outweighs the need to park in the street.   That’s OK….we’ll take it any way we can!

ANOTHER SELL-OUT!    Shelby Idol fans packed the Strand Theatre for the final round of competition on July 23, 2011.    All the performers did a wonderful job.   The show was entertaining and fast paced.   While the judges tallied their scores, the contestants sang several group numbers.

The Winners were anounced:

• ERICA MARCUM – Jr. Division
• ROB SPRINGER – Open Division

Both these performers will return to the Strand’s stage on December 16 & 17 as part of ROCKPHORIA.   

Congratulations to all the contestants.   Congratulations to our community for supporting such a wonderful event.

The Strand had fun on July 23, 2011 hosting the Final Round of competition for Shelby Idol.    Below are some images from that night.   They include Cody and Gordon hard at work running sound; the Sold Out sign goes up (once again), and the line stretching to Hendricks Street.   The final picture was taken from the Strand’s roof.

The ongoing saga of the Strand marquee took a new turn this week.   Our marquee is waiting on the power needed to run all 300 light bulbs.    This is a huge upgrade and takes time.

While we are waiting, our friends at the Skyline Drive-In have been working on their sign.   They just unveiled their reworked sign this week.   It motivates us to get ours finished!

The Shelbyville-Shelby County Library presented Mark’s Ark at the Strand Theatre on July 21, 2011.   This presentation was in support of their summer reading program.    The audience, the largest yet since we re-opened, were treated to all sorts of snakes, turtles, frogs, roosters, spiders….