College Theatre: Roe Green Center @ Kent State
On November 6, the Kent State Theatre and Dance program entered into a new world. With the opening of the Roe Green Center, the programs took a large step forward when they increased their performance spaces, storage areas, added a grand new lobby, and updated their lighting and sound systems. Added were a lighting laboratory, acting studio, vocal coaching suite and theatre and dance classrooms, a dance rehabilitation studio, a jazz dance class, a dance technique studio and a swing dance studio. All in all, the facilities are beautiful and practical.
The building was made possible due to a large financial grant by local arts patron and activis
t, Roe Green. An avid theatergoer, she received her M.A. in theatre from Kent State, has been a long time member of the KSU Foundation and School of Theatre and Dance and Porthouse Advisory Boards. She is on the Board at the Cleveland Play House, where she is the honorary producer of “FusionFest.” A graduate of Beachwood High School, where she was my student and got the “theatre bug,” she was recently inducted into the school's Hall of Fame. She is lovingly known to the KSU theatre students as, “The Fairy Godmother.”At the building's grand opening ceremony and ribbon cutting, the musical theatre program performed BRIGADOON, under the direction of Terri Kent. A sprightly and well-focused production, it featured fine performances by Miriam Henkel-Moellimann as Fiona, Kaitlyn Warren as Meg, and Gunther Henkel-Moellmann as Charlie.
