Hurrah Players marks four decades of believing in dreams with expanded musical theater education programs and the launch of a state-of-the-art building
The Hurrah Players’ 40th anniversary season brings exciting productions and a new building. Helmed by charismatic artistic director Hugh Copeland, who founded the company in 1984, the Hurrah Players provides young people in our region with top-notch theatrical education and performances.
Housing both the Nusbaum Family TV & Film Academy and the Hurrah Players Performing Arts Academy, the new building consolidates the Hurrah Players in a campus of operations in Norfolk’s NEON District, since the building is right across the street from Hurrah’s Copeland Center on Wilson.
Trish Wilbourne, the chair of the Hurrah Players Board of Directors, says the new building has room for growth, after years of small spaces. It’s full of airy offices, resource rooms, studios and classrooms.
For the TV & Film Academy, there’s a TV studio, an editing suite with MacBooks, and technology for students to learn animation. For Wilbourne, moving into the new building feels like the pinnacle of years of work by so many people, building on Copeland’s dream.
“This was for all of them,” Wilbourne says. “For the ones that started in the basement of the Ghent United church in 1984, and for the students who rehearsed and took classes at the warehouse space we were renting on Woodrow Avenue off of 21st Street, where there was a wooden dance floor with a pole in the middle,” she says. “The name of our capital campaign was Believe in the Dream, and to have that many people believe is just so gratifying. It brings tears to my eyes.”
Wilbourne says that the capital campaign that has culminated in the Hurrah Players’ new building was the vision of Douglas Perry, whom she describes as a major driver for development of the arts in the community. The Perry family also supports the Virginia Arts Festival, and Douglas Perry realized that some location shifts could create an arts campus for two institutions in the Hampton Roads art scene.
“He just moved some chess pieces around and said, you guys move from your building and renovate my building, and we’ll give it to you. And you can vacate the building on St. Pauls and give the building to the Virginia Arts Festival. And then they will have a campus, and you will have a campus. And it’s just brilliant because there are so many benefits to having two buildings next to each other.”
The arts campus allows students to move between rehearsal spaces and studios as they prepare for the rest of the season. The company just finished its Path to Freedom production, which traces the evolution of African American culture. Next up are Frozen Jr. in March, Junie B. Jones in May, and The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical in July.
The Hurrah Players is proud of all of its alums, which include Tony award winner Adrienne Warren, Grant Gustin of TV show The Flash and Water for Elephants on Broadway and Emmy Raver-Lampman, who starred in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy.
And Wilbourne says that all of the students gain pride and poise from their musical theater education, even when they decide on careers outside of the performing arts.
“They learn that it takes investment and time and discipline to develop skills, they learn, as Hugh always says, ‘There are no small parts, only small actors.’ They learn to be part of a team and to support each other.”
Learn more at hurrahplayers.com.
Photos courtesy of Hurrah Players
Elizabeth Blachman
