ORIGINS OF SILVER SPOTLIGHT THEATRE The idea for a senior theatre company hit Art Fidler before the pandemic hit him too. His plan to rewrite Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial By Jury for today, and for seniors, producing it in the main courtroom in our own Middlesex County Courthouse during the London Fringe Festival, died the death along with the London Fringe. Licking his wounds, he retreated to his computer to fool around in isolation with some scripts of Broadway musicals from the 20s, 30s and 40s that were hits in their day but are now mostly forgotten even though filled with wonderful songs. He was having fun reading and listening to Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms, when he was distracted by another thought: “Why not approach London’s Music Theatre Productions to take the idea under its broad wing, using its non-profit charitable status to help us get a starting grant?” Shazam! ! The Board Chair at that point was Rick Smith and Rick bought in immediately. They found Kathy Smith, London’s authority on London Seniors programs and government grants for start-ups. And so, the two lads and their mentor were off, with Rick wading through the thorn bushes of government grant proposals. Then, months later, good news! They got a grant from the Ontario Government! During some friendly theatre chit-chat, Art mentioned to Rick that he was having fun with an interesting old script. Rick immediately said, “Well then, let’s do that one!” And Babes in Arms was born again. One of Art’s students from the 1980s, Mary-Ellen Willard, stepped out of the past to offer her design and advertising business, adHOME Creative, to help them find a name and a logo for the new company, and so emerged Silver Spotlight Theatre. So that’s theatre…any dreamer needs to find believers that can help make reality out of that fantasy, and that’s just what happened! (And Art still has his hilarious updated Trial by Jury script standing by!) A BRANCH OF
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