Top summer events still ahead

Summer is rushing by. Can you believe that, for those of school-age, classes resume in just over 20 days? On stage, some summer shows have already opened (and closed), so there’s no time to lose. Fortunately, the next two weeks should offer some of the most glorious events of the summer, with several plays and the boards, the Macon Film Festival set to run July 20–23 and Bragg Jam and its related activities are icing the cake.

Theatre Macon’s musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” runs through July 15, by which time Macon Little Theatre’s “Sweeney Todd” will be open. In the spirit of true showbiz camaraderie, the MLT cast sent a “break a leg” video to the Theatre Macon cast. What a wonderful world we live in. Appropriately, “Happy Days” will close out the summer at Forsyth’s Rose Theatre.

This year’s Macon Film Festival is already drawing attention for the upcoming “full dome” film “Stardancer’s Waltz” at the Mark Smith planetarium. Meanwhile, the Macon Film Guild (not to be confused with the film festival) also has several hits on the July schedule.

MONEY TALKS, ARTS TRANSFORM

I sure hope everyone saw the report on the Arts & Economic Prosperity unveiled at the recent Arts Advocacy Breakfast at the Douglass Theatre.

The subtitle of the report, compiled by the Americans for the Arts using locally generated data, is telling: Creating jobs, generating commerce and driving tourism. While there was a moderate crowd, I do wish that a lot more of our community’s decision-makers could have been present to hear the news: Macon-Bibb’s nonprofit arts and cultural industry alone generates $88.1 million in economic activity annually. Having watched our various performance groups, museums and educational institutions grow over the years, I am not surprised.

We need to work on the “driving tourism” part of the report. Having family scattered around the Southeast and a subscriber to several travel magazines, I can’t help but notice what other (dare I say it, lesser) communities are doing.

The part of the program that set my educator’s heart aflame was the short speech by Rob Gibson of Savannah Music Festival fame. Gibson professed to be much-impressed by the Douglass (the theater that a former mayor tried to tear down), and while his tales of economic success would warm the heart of an accountant, the thunder and lightning of his talk came when he talked about the power of programs for youth and their ability to plant the seeds of a better future.

Oh, yes, we need to hear that, too. Desperately.

This story was originally published July 4, 2017 at 2:51 PM with the headline "Top summer events still ahead."