The LIVE FROM LEWISBURG VARIETY SHOW is—as our logo suggests—a spotlight on Lewisburg, and on the artists, organizations and energy that come together to make this vital creative community.
For approximately three quarters of an hour, our host, the rockabilly band, the theatre’s organist, our projectionists, and a crowd of guest players will guide you down a channel of vignettes, performances, and observations from the laughable to the sincere.
The LIVE FROM LEWISBURG VARIETY SHOW is housed in The Campus Theatre—a lovingly restored Art Deco masterpiece, built in 1941. At the time The Campus Theatre was built, a local theatre co-served as a town’s central hub of community, news, and entertainment.
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The LIVE FROM LEWISBURG VARIETY SHOW hopes to place the arts back at the center of this common wheel, and to remind its audiences of life’s creative risk in flashes of vaudeville, live television, the circus, and dust covered 8mm home movies.
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The LIVE FROM LEWISBURG VARIETY SHOW will embrace the playful and nostalgic variety show format, and—against the patina of the historic Campus Theatre—pull the variety show into the 21st Century!
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Like other variety shows before us—Ed Sullivan, Prairie Home Companion, Laugh-In, and The Muppet Show, the LIVE FROM LEWISBURG VARIETY SHOW, will bring our audience all the things that have made variety shows popular over the years. This show will offer the opportunity to enjoy a live, on stage performance as well as offering the show to an unlimited number of viewers by streaming the program online.
SIT BACK AND ENJOY OUR PROMO VIDEO
The Collaboration – The Arts – The Community
In our attempt to create a more connected community, three dynamic Lewisburg non-profit organizations—CommUnity Zone, the Lewisburg Downtown Partnership, and The Campus Theatre, Ltd.—have chosen the arts as our main avenue of messaging because it has the capacity to trigger reflection, generate empathy, create further dialogue, and foster new ideas and relationships.
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The arts can also offer powerful and dynamic ways of expressing ourselves and encourage us to examine our perceptions of what is true from a variety of perspectives, and it does all of that while entertaining us. For this reason, in troubled times, the arts have always been and will continue to be our roadmap to better times as well as an historical register of where we have come from.
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By bringing these three entities together, we have a team of committed individuals with the shared mission of creating this dynamic and inclusive community.
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In addition to these essential reasons, this project will provide an additional income stream for the Campus Theatre, a steady source of entertainment for the community, bring employment opportunities, and offer a showcase of the many talented individuals we are blessed to have in the valley.
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And finally, the LIVE FROM LEWISBURG VARIETY SHOW is a chance to put a spotlight on the uniqueness of our sense of place. Taking the variety show format of old, changing the patina, and bringing it into the 21st century is a challenge each of us takes on with much gusto.
