Perot memories:
Vintage show posters to line stairwell, hallway
Perot Theatre patrons will soon be able to dial back the years and see the visible memorabilia of shows gone by.
Perot staff have been placing the posters promoting many of these shows, such as concerts and touring productions, along the express stairwell and third floor hallway near the balcony seating. The shows are all ones that played the Perot since the downtown jewel was restored more than three decades ago.
In that time, everyone from Chinese acrobats and dance troupes to famous folks and talented thespians and more have made the Perot the preeminent venue for entertainment in Texarkana.
Perot staff like Randal Conry, operations director for the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, and Noah Crissman, technical director, have worked on the project.
“It’s actually something we’ve been talking about for a long time. We have quite an archive of posters dating back to 1981 when the building reopened. Some of them are really nice artworks and others have signed autographs and various reasons why we’d want to post them,” Conry said.
So, the money was put aside and the planning was done to get this project going, funded by the $2 enhancement fee now collected with each Perot ticket purchase. The express stairwell is where they started first. They plan to do more in the future.
“We’ll do other areas of the building, as well, over time,” Conry said.
Said Crissman, “Eventually we want to go in and add track lighting to isolate each one of the pictures.” Because of future renovations planned inside the Perot, that will have to wait. The inner lobby or the foyer (with its vaulted ceiling) has also seen some painting recently. About $20,000 of new equipment—lighting and sound consoles—are also on the way, Crissman said.
What posters did they decide to include? Unfortunately, they don’t include posters from before it was called the Perot, back when it was the Saenger and Paramount. Those don’t exist there anymore. The posters used are from the 1980s onward.
“We tried to pick a representative selection of posters,” Conry said. They focused on aesthetic value first: Is it pretty? Also, was there a big name star or some local significance? “And anything with signatures,” Conry said.
They want to include shows that were part of the Perot Theatre series, as well as Texarkana Symphony Orchestra events. One poster has Tim Conway and Harvey Korman. “The ‘Sweeney Todd’ one is pretty fun,” Crissman said.
Posters had been stored up on the third floor in an unused office. There are still a couple hundred posters remaining, including multiples of some shows.
In the future, those posters and new ones arriving will make an appearance at other locations in the theater or perhaps as posters to swap out with what’s there now. Each year, a diverse array of productions come to the Perot, delighting audiences in all sorts of ways, whether it’s a symphony show, Russian dancers, live band or any number of entertainers gracing the stage for a night or two.
“It’s certainly our hope that it stirs fond memories for people,” Conry said.
(On the Net: TRAHC.org.)
“We have quite an archive of posters dating back to 1981 when the building reopened. Some of them are really nice artworks and others have signed autographs and various reasons why we’d want to post them.” —Randal Conry