Health & Fitness
At the Guild - #2
A continuing blog about activities at The Players Guild of Dearborn.
There continues to be a lot happening at The Players Guild of Dearborn.
Over the past weekend there were three more performances of the Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music.
On Saturday, Lindsey MacDonald, Valerie Haas, Chelsea Burke, and Music Director Paul Abbott performed at the Dearborn Community Arts Council's First Lady's Tea at the Dearborn Hills Golf Club. They presented selected songs from A Little Night Music. Chelsea sang "The Miller's Son." Lindsey sang "Soon." Valerie and Lindsey sang "Every Day A Little Death." Paul accompanied all of the songs at the keyboard.
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Last week a crew from Ann Arbor Fire Protection finished installing fire suppression heads in the auditorium. Look closely at the auditorium ceiling the next time you're in the Guild and you will be able to spot the 12 new sprinkler heads.
On Saturday morning, the Renovation Steering Committee met to discuss a number of issues. The committee is planning the reseating of the auditorium which will begin next week after A Little Night Music closes. The first part of the process will be the removal of the old seats.
Find out what's happening in Dearbornwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The seats are estimated to be at least 75 years old. They have an interesting history. They were the seats in the Ford Rotunda that the Ford Motor Company built for the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. The Fair ran for two years. After the Fair closed, Ford had the Rotunda disassembled and moved to Dearborn where it opened to the public again in 1936 and became one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country.
In 1952, the Rotunda underwent extensive renovation. At that time, several Guild members had close ties with Ford Motor and the company told the Guild members they could have the seats if they came and got them. Guild members came together to do just that, removing the seats from the Rotunda, moving them to the Guild, and installing them on the three-tiered floor in the auditorium. In the 1960s, the auditorium floor was raked and the seats were reinstalled on the raked floor.
After the seats are removed from the auditorium many of them will continue to have a life in the theatre as they are going to be installed in the Out of the Box Theatre complex in Wyandotte which is home to the Downriver Actors Guild. Following their removal, the auditorium floor will be prepared for the installation to the new seats, the auditorium will be replasted and painted, and insulation will be installed.
It's going to be a busy summer At the Guild. Stay tuned.
