EASTON, Pa. – From Pets on Parade, to the Beach Boys, to the Freddies, The State Theatre Center for the Arts has been showcasing stars for now 100 years.<\/p>\n
“If you drive by on Northampton Street in eastern Pennsylvania, you don’t expect this. This is modeled after the Davanzati Palace,” President and CEO Shelly Brown said.<\/p>\n
The initial vaudeville and motion picture theatre building nearly went dark, but citizens saved it from demolition in the 1980s. The building was resurrected with Craig Thatcher, making it a performance ritual.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s the most unique one, certainly on the East Coast,” Thatcher said.<\/p>\n
The Lehigh Valley based Thatcher has played the venue at least 10 times, including last March.<\/p>\n
“The electricity that we felt from that audience, you could it was palpable. You could cut it with a knife. It was so thick, and it inspired from the very first note. It inspired everybody on stage,” he explained.<\/p>\n
While the show has remained consistent, the business has changed Brown said.<\/p>\n
“When I came here, there were, you know, a couple of other places. Now there’s over 50, and we’re all fighting for the same talent. We’re non-profit. You know, casinos and arenas, they’re not non-profit. I mean, they’ve got way more money than we do. They can pay way more than we can. And so it’s a matter of relationships,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
So, for Brown, now in her 34th year, her career motto could be, \u201cAll business is a stage, and the men and women are merely players.\u201d<\/p>\n
“The magic question is, what gets them here?” she asked.<\/p>\n
For the State Theatre, what gets them here is a question answered night after night for a century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – From Pets on Parade, to the Beach Boys, to the Freddies, The State Theatre Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[61560,153,155,154,65022,2181,65024,157,22592,65021,65020,65023],"class_list":["post-142060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-100th-anniversary","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-craig-thatcher","tag-easton","tag-historic-venue","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-performing-arts","tag-shelly-brown","tag-state-theatre","tag-vaudeville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}