It’s the end of the reel for the Little Art Theatre. The 84-year-old theater will play its last 35-millimeter film print before dismantling its ancient projector during a special film festival beginning this weekend, after which the theater will close for three months to undergo a half-million-dollar renovation and digital upgrade.

During the “Last Reel Film Festival” the theater will show five fan favorites spanning five decades in both digital and 35mm formats. The festival runs from Friday, April 26, to Tuesday, April 30. It begins and ends with the Italian film Cinema Paradiso, a nostalgic movie about a young boy’s relationship with a film projectionist in a small Sicilian village, which, according to the Little Art’s website, is a “fitting way to say farewell to the Little Art’s vintage Italian reel-to-reel projectors.” The other films are Harold & Maude, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, King of Hearts and Amélie.

Last year the non-profit theater raised $475,000 from the community for the Little Art’s first complete renovation since it opened in 1929. An industry-mandated transition to digital sparked the need for the capital campaign. While an estimated 20 percent of theaters in North America will not convert to digital and probably close in the next few years, the Little Art is making a major investment in its future.
“So many theaters are facing this,” explained Little Art board member Laura Carlson. “The Little Art was so smart to do the digital transition and renovation at the same time.”

In addition to a state-of-the-art $80,000 digital projection and Dolby digital sound system, the renovation will include cushy seats with cup holders, a steeper floor incline for better viewing, a new screen, handicapped-accessible doors and bathrooms, an expanded concession area and a host of upgrades to the mechanical systems of the historic building.

Little Art executive director Jenny Cowperthwaite, who started working at the theater in 1971, said the theater won’t lose its funky atmosphere amidst the changes.

“We don’t really want it to look like a movie theater,” Cowperthwaite said. “I know that the spirit of the theater will be untouched. It’s getting a makeover but inherently what it is isn’t changing.”

The “Last Reel Film Festival” is also a celebration of the Little Art’s long history. On display in the lobby will be a selection of hand-drawn film posters created by the now deceased Dick Miller from the 1950s to the 1980s, Little Art program guides dating from the 1960s and other memorabilia. Patrons who wear a Little Art T-shirt will get a free non-alcoholic drink.

While Cowperthwaite originally wanted to show all 35mm prints during the festival, some must be projected digitally. Harold & Maude (1971), a perennial favorite at the Little Art, will be shown on Blu-Ray. Cinema Paradiso (1988) may be screened digitally as well, since there are only two prints still circulating in the U.S., one of which is severely damaged. (“It would have been nostalgic to have the film breaking every two seconds, but that’s not really what we’re going for,” Cowperthwaite said.) A brand new 35mm print of E.T. (1982) commemorating the film’s 30th anniversary will be shown. And King of Hearts (1966) and Amélie (2001), which broke Little Art attendance records when it was released, will both be projected in 35mm.
The old 35mm standard has its advantages and its drawbacks, according to Cowperthwaite.

“I find 35mm very warm and it has a depth of color,” Cowperthwaite said. “But there are lots of problems [with 35mm] that will go away with digital — being out-of-focus, out-of-frame, the film breaking, missing a changeover.”

After the film festival, the projector, which dates back to the 1940s, will be dismantled by longtime projectionist Andy Holyoke, who wanted to be the one to do it (“It’s like putting your old dog down,” Cowperthwaite said.) According to Cowperthwaite, the projector is on its last legs and even if 35mm made a comeback, the Little Art would need a new projector anyway.

Meanwhile, the new digital projection equipment and renovated theater might provide new revenue opportunities for the non-profit theater, which must raise $50,000 in charitable donations each year to stay afloat. The new equipment will allow live internet streaming of events like operas and concerts and the space may attract more facility rentals, Cowperthwaite said.

“We would love for this business to break even and that’s not going to happen on movies alone,” Cowperthwaite said. “If we can build that aspect of the business, it takes the pressure off fundraising.”
During last year’s unprecedented capital campaign the Little Art raised $475,000 from a combination of foundation grants and individual gifts. The bulk of the money came from the Morgan Family Foundation ($250,000), while the rest was raised from the the Friends of the Little Art, a 550-strong membership organization ($75,000), Little Art’s board and staff ($70,000), the Yellow Springs Community Foundation ($30,000), and the community ($50,000).

Cowperthwaite, who has managed the Little Art since 1978, is looking forward to taking some time off during the renovation, but is also grieving about the coming changes.

“It’s going to be pretty hard for me when they first start gutting the place,” Cowperthwaite said. “I know I’ve spent more time in this building than any place I’ve lived…I know every corner. It’s been a real nurturing space for me.”

Some things at the theater will stay the same, including the iconic house lights, created by an Antioch College art student and installed in 1957, the outside marquee and the exterior doors. And the beloved popcorn condiments won’t change either, Cowperthwaite said.
The theater is projected to re-open in mid-August.
Visit http://www.littleart.com for festival show times.

Over the last five months, a half-million dollar renovation has transformed the 84-year-old Little Art Theatre from a relic of the 35-millimeter film era to a state-of-the-art, fully-digital and accessible movie house ready for the 21st century.

With $475,000 in local donations, the theater was upgraded with a digital projector and surround-sound system, new cushioned seats with cupholders, handicapped-accessible bathrooms and a spacious lobby, among other changes.

To showcase the makeover, the Little Art will hold an open house and grand reopening from 3 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, with free films, live music, free popcorn, face painting, concessions with wine and beer for sale, limited edition T-shirts commemorating the renovation and more. Short Street will be closed for food trucks and dancing in the street, with movie-themed music provided by DJ Juju from 5 to 9 p.m. Attendees are encouraged to dress as a favorite movie character. At 7 p.m. the theater will screen the world premiere of Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert’s animated welcome movie custom made for the Little Art.

Then on Sunday, Sept. 29, a 12-day film festival begins with the screening of a fresh digital print of the 1923 comic silent film Safety Last! starring Harold Lloyd, one of Cowperthwaite’s favorite films. The “Back to the Movies Festival” continues with a parade of fan favorites and new movies from over the summer, including the 1965 musical The Sound of Music (one of Little Art patrons’ favorite films according to a recent survey), Before Midnight (2013), The Kings of Summer (2013), Renoir (2012), Mud (2012), Much Ado About Nothing (2012), the documentary 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), the Japanese animated film From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) and The Way, Way Back (2013).

Regular programming returns on Friday, Oct. 11, with Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. Visit http://www.littleart.com for show times.

Read the full story here: http://ysnews.com/?p=34990

Opening a new series of discussions about film at the Little Art Theatre, Kurt Miyazaki will host “Representations of Power in Fascist, Marxist & Liberal Films, or Would Mussolini Like the Matrix?” on Saturday, Feb. 1, 11 a.m.–12:45 p.m. The event kicks off the Let’s Talk Film series the Little Art is launching this month. Tickets are $5, and drinks and snacks will be available at the theater.

Saturday’s discussion will focus on three films, including Triumph of the Will, the German documentary about the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, the 1952 classic Western High Noon, and the contemporary futuristic favorite, The Matrix.  

Miyazaki taught political science at Wittenberg University and currently owns the Emporium Cafe.

The moment of birth is joyful miracle — a time when the loving bond between parent and child is first formed. But something else is formed in that moment that could be the key to the child’s lifelong health, according to a new documentary. That something is the child’s bacterial microbiome, a collection of good bacteria that will keep pathogens at bay while supporting a healthy gut and immune system through life.

Turning a microscope on birth, the film “Microbirth” argues that as a baby passes through their mother’s birth canal, lies directly on their mother’s skin and begins to breastfeed, their bacterial microbiome is first seeded. Caesarean deliveries and other interventions in birth can harm the one-time chance to establish a healthy microbiome. Such interventions could be affecting the microbial inheritance of the next generation, making them more prone to chronic diseases like asthma, type-1 diabetes, obesity, and certain cancers.

“Microbirth” will be screened at 1 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 11, at the Little Art Theatre as part of an event organized to shed light on birth and breastfeeding practices that support healthy children and adults. Admission is free.

Following the 60-minute British documentary, released in 2014, a panel of local and area experts will answer questions. Panelists are local midwife author and educator Cindy Farley, a Certified Nurse Midwife, CNM, and PhD who teaches at Georgetown University; Jalana Lazar, a CNM with a Master’s in Public Health who works at Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton; Dhyana Graham, a CNM and international board-certified lactation consultant who works at Riverside Memorial Hospital in Columbus, and Leslie Edmunds, a registered dietician with a private practice in Springfield. Local CNM Anne Erickson organized the film screening and panel to spread the word about the latest research on the bacteria benefits of natural, vaginal birth.

“From my perspective as a midwife and mother, birth is an incredible well-designed process and the more we interfere with it, the less it works,” Erickson said.

Read the full story in the Jan. 8 issue of the News.

For more information, visit: http://microbirth.com/

Return to main article: Little Art, big schedule

Growing up in Yellow Springs, Martha Hyde remembers well as a high school student attending a Charlie Chaplin film festival in the mid-1970s. She went every night to the festival, she said in a recent interview.

Almost  40 years later, Hyde returns to the Little Art as one of three musicians of the New River Ensemble, who will perform original music set to the silent classics of Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

“It feels like closing the circle,” she said.

Hyde, who will play clarinet, flute and piccolo, will join pianist and ukulele player Brendan Cooney and cellist Lisa Liske-Doorandish in the performance on Thursday, Jan. 15, at 7:30 p.m. The group will play original music composed by Cooney for the classic silent films.

The event offers villagers a chance to experience something both old and new, Hyde said.

“It’s a chance to see silent films the way they used to be presented, with live music,” she said. “But the music has been updated.” And because much of the music will be improvised, “People will hear something that’s never been heard before. It’s different every time.”

For the Keaton films, Cooney has created “urban streetscape sounds,” such as might have been found in the 1920s, including ragtime, jazz, boogie-woogie and klezmer music. Chaplin films traditionally were accompanied by classical music, so Cooney used a classical style “with a twist,” Hyde said, since Chaplin himself was a mischief-maker.

The performance is part of a larger tour of Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana by the musicians, during which they’ll present workshops in schools, give a performance at the Cleveland Institute of Art and other venues and take part in a residency at the Denison University Winter Festival.

Along the way, according to Hyde, the three will be ambassadors for Friends Music Camp, where they have all been longtime faculty members. The camp is unique in offering a safe place to not only grow as a musician but also to experiment and try new things, according to Hyde.

“It’s a very fertile place for people to learn,” she said. “That’s what keeps me coming back.”

The daughter of Carl and Lorena Hyde of Yellow Springs, Martha Hyde has lived in New York City since 1979, making her living playing in Latin dance bands, as a regular pit musician in Broadway shows, at the Radio City Music Hall, and also, most recently, as a teacher. Hyde has also performed at Avery Fisher Hall, St. John the Divine Cathedral and CBGB. among other venues.

But she’s very pleased to be performing in her hometown.

“The Little Art has been a beloved venue for me since I was old enough to remember going downtown,” Hyde wrote in a press release for the concert. “I have played in all three public schools in Yellow Springs, Kelly Hall at Antioch and several area churches as well as the old Memorial Hall in Springfield with the Springfield Symphony. None of these spaces is more beloved by me than the Little Art Theatre.”

Tickets for the performance are priced at $12 ($9 for seniors and students if purchased in advance), and $15 ($11 for seniors and students) if purchased at the door.

Read the companion articles:
• Film eyes microbiome at birth
• Watch Chaplin, hear live music

It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s the dead of winter.

What to do? You still have to get out of the house once in a while. You still have to have some fun.

Villagers, do not despair. Help is on the way. In fact, it’s already arrived in the form of the Little Art Theatre. During this deep, dark, cold month of January, the renovated theater is exploding with new and interesting programming that seeks to educate, inform and entertain you. So come on inside.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had so much going on in one week,” Little Art Executive Director Jenny Cowperthwaite said this week, surveying the events that begin the weekend of Jan. 10–11. “It’s a lot to choose from. I hope people will try something new.”

Since its reopening a year ago September, the Little Art has worked hard to broaden its programming, according to Cowperthwaite. The nonprofit theater seeks to be self-sustaining, and while it has a devoted core audience, it also needs to develop new audiences.

“Our goal is to get more people to come through the door,” Cowperthwaite said.

This week’s events include a free film and panel discussion on childbirth; the kick-off of an Antioch College classic documentary film series; and a live musical group performing original music to the films of Keaton and Chaplin. Oh, and let’s not forget the theater’s two regularly scheduled films, “Citizenfour” and “Rosewater.”

Classic documentaries

On Sunday, Jan. 11, villagers can see the first in the series of four classic documentaries shown by Antioch College media arts faculty member Charles Fairbanks. “Nanook of the North,” the 1922 silent documentary directed by Robert Flaherty, will be shown at 7 p.m. Tickets to this screening, as to all films in the series, will be $5, and the community is invited. Fairbanks will offer historical context to introduce each film and also guide a discussion following each screening.

Organized by Fairbanks, the series consists of four documentaries chosen because, while they are very different in style and content, they have all influenced documentarians for generations, he said.

Fairbanks chose the 1922 “Nanook of the North” as the first film because it was both one of the first documentaries and also one of the most important, he believes. Specifically, the filmmaker spent years immersed in the lives of the Inuits who are the film’s focus, and then created a narrative arc with which to tell their story.

“It’s a dynamic film that moves us in the way that feature films more often do,” he said.

The film tells the story of Inuit hunter Nanook and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh Canadian Hudson Bay region, and is “a cinematic milestone that continues to enchant audiences,” according to the Criterion Collection.

• Next in the series will be “Man with a Movie Camera,” a 1929 silent film by Dziga Vertov. It will take place Sunday, Jan. 25 at 7 p.m.

Considered by Sight and Sound Magazine as “the Greatest Documentary of All Time,” the film, immediately controversial, was then ignored for decades until being rediscovered in the 1960s. Since then, according to a press release, its influence can be seen among many documentaries, experimental and feature films. Though the film is considered “silent,” it has a soundtrack of musicalized sirens, crying babies, barking dogs and more, recorded in 1995 by the Alloy Orchestra.

• Considered by many to be the first feminist film, the 1970 documentary “Growing Up Female” will be the third in the series. The screening takes place Sunday, Feb. 8 and 15 at 7 p.m. Local filmmaker Julia Reichert, who made the film in 1970 with her partner, Jim Klein, will speak.

The film portrays the lives of six girls and women, including the institutional forces that shape their identities.

• The fourth film in the series, “Waltz with Bashir,” made in 2008 by Ari Folman, will be shown Sunday, March 8, at 7 p.m. at the Little Art.

According to the late film reviewer Roger Ebert, “Waltz with Bashir” is a “devastating animated film that tries to reconstruct how and why thousands of innocent civilians were massacred because those with the power to stop them took no action.” Fairbanks views the film, which is animated, as “a great example of what documentary filmmaking could be in the future.”

Cowperthwaite is especially pleased to be collaborating with Antioch College in presenting the documentary series.

“These films fall right into what we want to do as an educational piece,” she said. “And I love partnering with Antioch.

Return to main article: Little Art, big schedule

The moment of birth is a joyful miracle — a time when the loving bond between parent and child is first formed.

But something else is formed in that moment that could be the key to the child’s lifelong health, according to an award-winning 2014 documentary. That something is the child’s bacterial microbiome, a collection of good bacteria that will keep pathogens at bay while supporting a healthy gut and immune system through life.

Turning a microscope on birth, the film “Microbirth” argues that as a baby passes through its mother’s birth canal, lies directly on its mother’s skin and begins to breastfeed, its bacterial microbiome is first seeded. But Caesarean deliveries and other interventions in birth can harm the one-time chance to establish a healthy microbiome. Such interventions could be affecting the microbial inheritance of the next generation, making them more prone to chronic diseases like asthma, type-1 diabetes, obesity, and certain cancers.

“Microbirth” will be screened at 1 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 11, at the Little Art Theatre — with free admission — as part of an effort to shed light on birth and breastfeeding practices that support healthy children and adults. The film, produced and directed by the British filmmaking couple Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford, was the winner of the 2014 Life Sciences Film Festival in Prague.

Following the 60-minute documentary, a panel of Yellow Springs and Dayton area experts will answer questions. Panelists are local midwife author and educator Cindy Farley, Ph.D., a certified nurse midwife, or CNM, who teaches at Georgetown University; Jalana Lazar, a CNM with a master’s in Public Health who works at Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton; Dhyana Graham, a CNM and international board-certified lactation consultant who works at Riverside Memorial Hospital in Columbus, and Leslie Edmunds, a registered dietician with a private practice in Springfield.

Local CNM Anne Erickson organized the film screening and panel to spread the word about the latest research on the bacteria benefits of natural, vaginal birth.

“From my perspective as a midwife and mother, birth is an incredible, well-designed process and the more we interfere with it, the less it works,” Erickson said.

Having spent nearly 40 years in the field, first as a labor and delivery nurse and later as a CNM working in women’s health, Erickson has seen the dramatic rise in C-sections (which are now more than one-third of all deliveries in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control), along with other interventions that could interfere with the critical transfer of bacteria from mother to baby.

While there are life-saving reasons to do a C-section, the complete health impact of a C-section for mothers and babies should be considered — including the theory of bacterial seeding, Erickson argued. Practices like induction of labor with synthetic oxytocin, which can lead to C-sections, should also be re-evaluated in light of the recent research on the value of good bacteria, she added.

Scientists are just now beginning to understand the critical role that the 100 trillion microbes that live in and on the human body play in keeping us healthy, according to the film. Since humans only have 10 trillion of their own cells, we are, in fact, about 90 percent bacteria and comprise a symbiotic super-organism. The so-called disappearing microbiome hypothesis states that the loss of diversity in the human microbiome (which is down by one-third in the last century) could be fueling non-communicable diseases, now the world’s biggest killer.

Along with the overuse of antibiotics, birth practices could also affect the bacterial microbiome, according to the film. That’s because without the initial seeding of bacteria, the newborn’s immune system won’t mature properly, which affects metabolic processes and the healthy functioning of the immune system. Taking probiotics later in life can’t replace the seeding event, the film adds.

Panelists will talk about the importance of understanding the microbiome for parents and birth practitioners alike. In an email, Edmunds, who grew up locally and attended Greenon High School, said she will serve as the panel’s nutrition expert and will talk about the benefits of breastfeeding and also continuing to feed the gut with healthy organisms like probiotics and prebiotics.

Graham said she will add her knowledge of the “major role breastfeeding plays in establishing a healthy bacterial flora in infancy,” she said, along with how the World Health Organization’s Baby Friendly initiative is helping U.S. hospitals incorporate evidence-based birth practices. Lazar will discuss the importance of diet and avoiding antibiotics in microbiome health along with her work teaching vulnerable populations about prenatal nutrition. Farley will discuss the midwifery model of care, which leads to fewer birth interventions and better outcomes for mothers and babies.

According to the film’s press release, recent population studies show that, compared to vaginally born babies, babies born by C-section have about a 20 percent higher risk of developing asthma, type-1 diabetes and obesity and slightly smaller increases in risk for gastro-intestinal conditions like Crohn’s disease or celiac disease. In the film, researchers also connect many conditions, such as depression and skin cancer, to C-section births while cautioning that the research does not prove that C-sections cause chronic disease — only that they are associated with it.

The film ultimately asks: “Could we be producing a generation of children who are missing vital bacteria and could that be passed down and down for all future generations?”

For more information, visit: http://microbirth.com.

The Little Art Theatre will host screenings of classic 1973 rock opera film “Jesus Christ Superstar” Friday through Sunday, March 27–29. The three-day event will feature Q&A from actors Ted Neeley and Barry Dennen, who played Jesus and Pilate, respectively, in the film. The stop in Yellow Springs is part of a nationwide screening tour showcasing the restored digital print of the film, and allowing fans to meet Neeley and Dennen, as well as other cast members in select cities.

“Jesus Christ Superstar” began its life as a rock opera album, with lyrics and music penned by stage legends Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. When the album was later developed as a stage production, Ted Neeley, who had previously starred in “Hair,” auditioned for the Broadway production — as Judas. The part of Judas went to Ben Vereen, however, and Neeley was cast as understudy for Jesus. Neeley took on the title role in the stage play’s Los Angeles production, and was cast as Jesus in the film soon after.

Over the 42 years since the film was produced, Neeley, along with several of his fellow film cast mates, has continued to portray Jesus on the stage in revivals of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Most recently, Neeley finished up a year of performing “Jesus Christ Superstar” on stages across Italy at the end of February.

On Wednesday, March 4, Neeley spoke with Lauren Shows via Skype audio about his experiences with the film and the play and what playing Jesus for 40 years has meant to him, among other things. Listen below.

A full story on the Yellow Springs screenings will appear in the March 15 issue of the News. For more information on Neeley and the 2015 screening tour, visit http://www.tedneeley.com.

(Psst, Superfans: if you’d like to hear the full, unedited interview, listen up below via SoundCloud.)

Just in time for Easter, locals will have the chance to snap a selfie with Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

The stars who portrayed the Biblical figures in the 1973 film “Jesus Christ Superstar” will attend a weekend of screenings at the Little Art Theatre, March 27–29.

After the movie, Ted Neeley, who played Jesus of Nazareth in the groundbreaking rock opera, and Barry Dennen, who was Pontius Pilate, will sign autographs and answer questions about their lives and careers.

Neeley, who still tours in the stage version of the musical, has played the role of Jesus more than 5,000 times and has been changed by the experience, he said in a telephone interview this week.

“When you play the most important character in the history of the world and people perceive you that way, it affects you,” said Neeley, who is 71. “Even to pretend to walk in those sandals every day of the week, I am lifted and elevated.”

Tickets are available for screenings of a newly-remastered digital version of the film  7 p.m. Friday, March 27, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 29 (Saturday evening is sold out). The screenings include an hour-long, pre-film Q&A session, as well as a post-film general meet-and-greet and autograph signing. To purchase tickets ahead of time, which is recommended, visit http://www.littleart.com. In addition, VIP passes are on sale for Friday and Sunday which include a pre-film VIP-only meet and greet with Neeley and Dennen, along with memorabilia. For a little more money, an attendee can even be guaranteed a seat next to the stars.

According to event organizer and former village resident Vanessa Query, no matter what package attendees choose, “hugs are included.” Query, a “Jesus Christ Superstar” superfan, is organizing screenings around the country from her home of Providence, R.I. because she knows the film still resonates with people everywhere more than 40 years after it was released.

“It’s so awesome that people still connect with this,” Query said. “For me it’s the quality of the music … I’m not Christian but I love that it gets Jesus to people who wouldn’t normally care about him.”

Originally a concept album and Broadway show, “Jesus Christ Superstar” was an early example of rock opera, with music by Andrew Lloyd Weber and lyrics by Tim Rice. The film, shot on location in Israel, features stunning cinematography of the  Holy Land desert juxtaposed with ’70s fashion and flair. In one number Jesus’ disciples sing “What’s the Buzz?” while Judas dons bellbottoms.

The film is based upon Biblical accounts of Jesus during the last seven days of his life and originally sparked controversy because of its modern touches and because it showed Jesus as a man, not as the Christ, Neeley explained.

“It’s a concept about Jesus as a man, which is not challenging the deity,” Neeley said. “It’s looking at him through the eyes of contemporaries who saw him as a man prior to crucifixion and resurrection. And everyone can see elements of themselves [in Jesus] — his fears and desires, his questions and doubts.”

Neeley remembers pushing through crowds of protesters each night when he took the stage as Jesus in the Broadway version, which preceded the film in the early 1970s. Controversy over the project continued until the film’s director Norman Jewison sought, and received, the blessing of Pope Paul VI prior to the film’s theatrical release, Neeley said.

“The Pope said, ‘Not only do I love your film, but because it is set to music, I think it will bring the next generation to Christianity,’” Neeley recalled.

During a year-long run of the musical in Europe, Neeley met the current pope, Francis. He recently returned to his California home in preparation for a U.S. screenings tour of the film.

Reflecting on his life, Neeley said he is blessed and grateful for the opportunity to play Jesus, which has affected him spiritually and personally. Neeley met his wife during the filming of “Jesus Christ Superstar” — she was a dancer in the movie. And, he says, each time he plays Jesus he does more research to prepare for the role, while it deepens his faith as a Christian. The experience is humbling, he said.

“I know that I’m not Jesus — I am just a rock-and-roll drummer from Texas who can hit high notes,” Neeley said, referring to days in a rock band in the 1960s. In 1969, Neeley was cast in the musical “Hair” which led to his role in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” he said. Neeley is still a musician, and released the album “Rock Opera” last year, which features selected tracks “Tommy” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” among other songs.

Before organizing film screenings, Query had a role in re-connecting cast members of “Jesus Christ Superstar” with her 2009 blog post questioning the whereabouts of Bob Bingham, who played Caiaphas in the film. After false leads that Bingham was a blues singer and old nemesis of Gore Vidal, Query tracked down the real Bingham in upstate New York, where he was retired from the zipper industry. That led to a mini-cast reunion with Bingham and others last year.

From singing along with Mary Magdalene in her bedroom as a young girl, to arranging screenings across the country for the stars, Query is definitely a a “Jesus Christ Superstar fangirl,” she said. And she is thrilled to be able to help other fans meet the stars of a film that they love.

“A huge part of a cult film is the fans,” she said.

Click here for an in-depth audio interview with Neeley.

It’s a weekday afternoon, you have a few free hours, you want to see a movie. Wish the Little Art were open? Now it is.

Yellow Springs’ hometown theater recently debuted weekday matinees — 3 p.m. showings Monday through Thursday of the week’s feature film for the matinee price of $7. The first weekday matinee drew one viewer. Attendance doubled on the second day. Executive Director Jenny Cowperthwaite hopes that, as word spreads, daytime film lovers will “vote with their feet,” as she put it in a recent interview.

The idea for 3 p.m. weekday matinees came from a mentor of hers who operates an independent theater in Waterville, Maine, she said. That theater tried the unorthodox show time, and “it took about a year to catch on” — but catch on it did, she said.

Weekday matinees are just one way the Little Art is experimenting with programming this spring. Another new initiative is Music and a Movie, a monthly pairing of live music and a film. Music and a Movie kicked off in March with a performance by local bluegrass band the Corndrinkers and a screening of country music saga “The Winding Stream.” A member of the Corndrinkers proposed the event, which packed the house, and the Little Art decided to carry the idea forward with different music-movie pairings the fourth Thursday of every month. This month, on Thursday, June 23, at 7 p.m., local pop-rock band the Speaking Suns will play, followed by a showing at 8 p.m. of the 2007 comedy-drama “Juno,” about a precocious pregnant teen.

“We’re excited about having music in the theater,” said Operations and Marketing Manager Brian Housh. The Little Art has a stage and a podium, which gives it flexibility for music and other live events, he said. For example, popular Dayton-based drag troupe the Rubi Girls, which has performed at the Little Art in the past, will perform again during Yellow Springs Pride, later this month.

Trying new movie times and diversifying programming are part of the theater’s ongoing effort to build its audience, he and Cowperthwaite said. Movie attendance is down across the country, according to Cowperthwaite, and the Little Art is not immune to that decline. Involved with the theater since she was 15, she remembers when people would show up to the window, push money through to the cashier and ask, “What’s playing?”

Those days are gone, and movie theaters in the Netflix era have to work harder to appeal to audiences who may, as Housh said, “find it easier to watch a movie at home.”

The Little Art’s slogan is “The best place to watch a movie, together,” and that distills what the theater hopes is its appeal: a community gathering place for enjoying movies, music and other programs in the company of friends, neighbors and strangers. Yellow Springs residents represent the majority of the theater’s audience, as well as the vast majority — roughly 80 percent — of the Friends of the Little Art, the theater’s membership program, which augments ticket sales, concessions and rental fees to fund its operations.

“The environment that Jenny’s built up has created an icon in the community,” Housh said. “People are excited to have an event here.”

Dozens of people, from movie producers to movie enthusiasts, contact the Little Art each year about screening films and hosting events at the theater, said Cowperthwaite, who handles most of those overtures. For example, the theater was contacted this spring by someone involved in the upcoming release of the new Grateful Dead documentary, “Going Furthur,” which is being promoted through a cross-country, festival-like tour. One stop? The Little Art in Yellow Springs.

“We do get lucky,” Housh laughed, explaining that a Facebook connection was responsible for the “Going Furthur” screening, upcoming on Tuesday, June 14. “Everyone’s connected to Yellow Springs through one degree of separation on Facebook,” he claimed.

Social media, managed by Housh, has been a key piece of the theater’s marketing outreach. “We get a lot of traction with social media,” Housh said, adding that the immediacy of the medium allows people to decide, spur of the moment, to come to something at the Little Art. “For our size, we’re a marketing machine,” Cowperthwaite laughed.

The theater’s core demographic is 50 to 80, she said — “people who grew up going to the movies.” Younger audiences are harder to attract, not just for the Little Art, but for smaller theaters everywhere, she said. This spring’s new programming aims to draw in a younger crowd. Music and a Movie, with its element of live music, seeks to engage younger (and also older) people, Cowperthwaite said, and the new weekday matinees could appeal to anyone with a flexible daytime schedule — not just retirees, but stay-at-home parents and the increasing number of villagers who work from home. To reach families, the Little Art is offering weekly Family Matinees (Fridays at 1 p.m.) through the summer, beginning this Friday, June 3, with “Shaun the Sheep Movie.” And its long-running Meal and a Movie program, in partnership with the Sunrise Café, targets the local “date night” market.

Beyond weekday matinees, the Little Art is contemplating other shifts in show times, said Cowperthwaite. The theater’s 9 p.m. screening is typically its least popular, and Cowperthwaite would like to conduct online polling to determine moviegoers’ preferred times.

And beyond movies themselves, other uses of the venue, restored to Art Deco elegance in 2013, are becoming increasingly important to the theater. Music and a Movie may become, in certain months, simply music, perhaps with a silent video backdrop, Housh said. The theater collaborates with lots of local nonprofits, he added, citing Community Solutions, the Resilience Network and the 365 Project as groups that have used the theater for special screenings followed by community conversations on local issues.

In everything that the Little Art tries, “our main driver is getting people into the theater,” Cowperthwaite said — “butts in seats,” she clarified, with a laugh. The theater, which became a nonprofit in 2009, relies on its board’s efforts and the financial support of 20 local business sponsors and around 450 Friends of the Little Art memberships to survive and thrive as the silver screen on Xenia Avenue.

For as long as it’s around, the Little Art will be that silver screen — but if it continues on its current course, it may become much more.

“Diversifying is important,” Cowperthwaite said. “Who knows what we’ll be in five years?”

The first of three national presidential debates Monday night was observed locally at the Little Art Theatre with activities througout the day culminating in a community watch party of the historic event.

The live stream of the candidates’ debate at Long Island’s Hoftra University and the Little Art’s programming leading up to it were presented  through a partnership with ThinkTV, Channel 16, the Dayton-based PBS affiliate.

A big component of the day involved Mills Lawn students, who visited the theater with their classes and teachers to learn more about the voting process.

Greg Schell, of ThinkTV’s education team, was on hand to engage the youngsters and introduce the programming.

The youngest students, 90 kindergartners and first-graders, watched a video titled “The Neighborhood Votes,” part of the “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” series.  Later, second- through sixth-graders were introduced to a newly produced e-book titled “Your Vote Counts,” whose author and illustrator had come to town to interact with the kids and answer questions.

The students’ excitement at being in the movie theater on a school day was palpable. ThinkTV’s Schell asked the kindergarteners and first-graders if they knew what voting is, and a sea of hands flew into the air.

“Picking things.”

“Two people -— you have to vote for one, and one will be president.”

“It’s when people choose.”

“The one the most people choose wins.”

The video depicted a variety of situations in which the youngsters might have a voice in making a group decision — choosing a snack, whether to eat inside or out, picking the kind of animal to have as a class pet. The video instructed that casting a vote involves stoppping to think about the choices and learning more about each one. It also showed strategies for dealing with disappointment when your choice loses.

The importance of making informed choices was one of the main themes of the program presented to the older students in “Your Vote Counts!”

The title is part of an educational book series written by MaryTherese Grabowski and illustrated by Michelle Graham-Fricks. The series, entitled “Spirit of America,” follows a girl named America Johnson through adventures that illuminate aspects of U.S. government and history.

In “Your Vote Counts!” America is running for student council. In the process, she learns how the country votes for president — including the electoral college system — along with responses for fellow students who say their vote doesn’t matter.

The video version of the book came about through a collaboration with PBS, and Mills Lawn students were the first group of young people to view it before PBS takes it national, according to Schell.

Grabowski and Graham-Fricks said they are thrilled to see the work come alive through the animation effects and were excited to get the local students’ reactions.

A former CBS TV reporter who lives in Washington, D.C., Grabowski said the idea for the book series and the character of America Johnson was born through a conversation she had with her then 12-year-old niece after Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination in 2008. She wondered aloud who he might pick for his cabinet, and her niece replied: “Why do I care who makes his furniture.”

Grabowski started thinking about when and how civics is taught. “Our kids are not learning civics until the 10th grade, and that’s scary because they’re voting in two years.”

The “Spirit of America” series introduces civics to a younger audience. Mills Lawn students, who are also getting in-class lessons with their teachers, were receptive to the message. One even remembered how many electoral votes are needed to become president — 270.

All told, more than 150 students took part in the programming Monday, arriving in shifts with their classes throughout the morning and early afternoon.

Adults got their turn later in the day, as the Little Art screened episodes from the American Experience PBS series “The Presidents” as a lead up to the evening Debate Watch Party.

Invitations for the free watch party had gone out to Little Art members, and so many reservations were made before Monday, a waiting list had been started.

Guests were waiting when the theater doors opened at 7:30 p.m. Balloons and streamers in the foyer underscored the festive atmosphere.

Among the crowd were representatives of the Plate of the Union initative, who were passing out information about food and farm-related issues, and a representative of the Greene County Democratic Party, who was handing out ballot listings of Democratic candidates.

The reasons people came and what they hoped to hear were varied.

Joshua Lustre, a college-age young adult who came with a group of friends, said he wanted the candidates to talk about “how the money will be used.” Noting that past presidents have focused on defense or infrastructure, he said, “I’m wondering what plan they have for spending money.”

Delores Adkins, from the county Democrats, said “I’d like to see Hillary wipe the floor with him.”

Laurel Finch said she considered the gathering “a debate watch support group.”

ThinkTV’s Schell stressed the historic nature of the evening, telling the crowd that “an estimated 80 million viewers are stopping what they’re doing to tune in.”

As someone engaged in educational initiatives, Schell asked the crowd if anyone else was interested in hearing about education. Sean Creighton, a member of the school board who works in higher education, raised his hand and went on record: “I’d like to hear about education.”

While the audience members at Hofstra University were instructed to remain silent through the debate — not to clap, call out, or make other audible responses to the proceedings, the Little Art crowd were encouraged to do the opposite.

“If you have an opinion, let it out,” Schell said.

And they did. Given the responses, if the gathered audience were the sole determiner of the election, Hillary Clinton would win the presidency in a landslide.

If Donald Trump supporters were in the audience, they kept their affinity to themselves.

Only once did anything Trump said get a positive response. A lone clap in the back of the theater echoed out near the beginning of the debate after the Republican candidate said the U.S. needed to stop companies from sending jobs to other countries.

Otherwise, Trump’s comments were met with derisive laughter and scorn. His assertion that gangs are made up of “illegal immigrants” and his declaration of support for so-called “stop-and-frisk” policing methods were both met with a loud “No, no, no.”

On the other hand, Clinton’s statements earned frequent applause and the occasional shouts of “amen” and “you go, sister!”

In the follow-up PBS commentary afterward, the statement from New York Times columnist David Brooks that he thought Trump dominated for the first 30 minutes received a resounding “boo” from the Yellow Springs folks still on hand.

The day’s events, from the morning’s youngest visitors to the evening’s experienced electorate, revealed a community deeply engaged in the electoral process and concerned about the future.

Our youth may not be able to vote in the presidential election, but they have a stake in its outcome, and they clearly care. They’re watching the adults — what we say, and what we do.

Considering the election’s potential results, one young Mills Lawn student offered what might have been the day’s best piece of advice: “If you can’t get what you pick -— don’t throw a fit.”

Musician and storyteller Pop Wagner makes no claim to being an actual cowboy, though he certainly looks the part, with his thick mustache, wide-brimmed hat and Western attire. Not to mention his fancy lariat work and extensive repertoire of cowboy stories and songs.

The Yellow Springs native, who has made his career since 1970 as a professional performer, is first and foremost a folk musician. He says he came to the cowboy genre through the folk songs of Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston and the calypso albums his parents, the late Paul and Betty Wagner, had in their eclectic record collection.

A member of the 1967 graduating class at YSHS, Wagner is preparing to return to his hometown next weekend for his 50th class reunion, and while he’s here, he’ll perform a concert with the regionally based Corndrinkers, a five-member old-time stringband, on Thursday, July 20, at the Little Art Theatre.

The 7 p.m. show is a reunion for Wagner and the Corndrinkers as well, he said recently by phone from his home of nearly 50 years in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. He said he’s known the Corndrinkers since shortly after they formed in the early 1970s, and he joined them in some of their early weekend contra dance performances at Carriage Hill Farm, in nearby Huber Heights.

Because of the size of the Little Art’s stage, Wagner said he didn’t plan to include his rope tricks in this appearance, but the performance will be filled with songs, stories and poems. He said he’ll start things off with a solo set; then, after an intermission, the Corndrinkers will take the stage before he eventually joins them and they close out the evening together.

The Corndrinkers feature fiddler Barb Kuhns; fiddler; multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Linda Scutt; guitarist and dobro player Doug Smith; clawhammer banjo player Tom Duffee; and Al Trumbull on the upright bass. The group specializes in “the fiddle tunes, heart songs and parlour music of the Southern mountain stringbands from … the 1920 and ‘30s,” according to its biography.

“It will be some great music, that’s for sure,” Wagner said.

Wagner said he got his first guitar as a gift when he was 14 years old. A year later, when his parents saw the love and affinity he had for playing, they bought him a better instrument, which he still has. He eventually added the fiddle, harmonica and “shingo,” a hand-made guitar-like instrument.

His road toward devoting his life to music-making was fostered further when in his freshman year of college in Ashland, Wisc., he lived off campus with three other young folk musicians. In the spring of that first year, the tumultuous 1968, he and his buddies organized a folk music festival. As a humorous note, they called it “the first annual” festival. “You know, I just played the 50th annual Ashland Folk Festival,” he said with a chuckle. The event has continued every year, still under student leadership, he said.

Those first few festivals during his own student years also brought him in contact with performers who became mentors and friends.

“I met Utah Phillips at one of those,” he said. Known as “The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest,” Phillips helped Wagner and his brother, Bodie, who also has pursued a musical career, get playing opportunities at the 1974 World’s Fair in Spokane, Wash., and the 1976 Smithsonian Folk Festival in Washington, D.C.

In the meantime, Wagner had decided to make Minnesota his home base. The location proved fruitful in bringing him in contact with Garrison Keillor in the early years of the entertainer and writer’s program, “A Prairie Home Companion.” Wagner performed frequently with Keillor before the popular show went national, but less so after it got bigger. He also appeared in the Robert Altman movie that was based on the program.

It was backstage at “A Prairie Home Companion” that he learned how to use a lariat. He said cowboy entertainer Glenn Orhlin, a National Heritage Fellow, gave him and folk musician Sean Blackburn their first lessons in trick roping there.

Over the years, Wagner has traveled to 44 states and 11 foreign countries playing traditional and some original cowboy songs, with a blend of country blues, oldtime and Cajun in the mix.

“It struck a chord with me,” he said of the cowboy repertoire. “I never got tired of it. I always loved the music and the scene that surrounds it and the people you meet.”

Being a folk musician supports “a simple approach to life,” he said, adding that he appreciates “the idea that people can make this music themselves with instruments you don’t have to plug in.”

“Old-time music has a floating repertoire,” in that many songs are widely known, he noted. “You can sit down with people you never met before and play. It’s a great way to share time together.”

Tickets for the July 20 performance are available through the Little Art Theatre’s website, http://www.littleart.com. Cost is $15. For more information, call the theater at 767-7671.

Acclaimed tenor Martin Bakari still calls Yellow Springs home, though he’s lived in New York for the past five years, and Boston for six years before that. The 2005 Yellow Springs High School graduate grew up in the village, and remains rooted here through family and friends in the area, including his mother, father and sister, Maria, Iddi and Zyna, and the memory of his older brother, Umoja Iddi.

Those roots are especially important because Bakari spends about nine months of every year rehearsing and performing on the road.

“When I come back to Yellow Springs, it always feels like home,” he said in a recent interview.

Bakari, 30, is an opera singer, a rising star in a competitive and demanding artistic field. He favors the term “theater artist” to capture the range of what a singer does to physically and emotively embody an operatic role. 

“Opera is theatrical, it tells a story,” he said.

A graduate of both the Juilliard School and Boston University, Bakari has performed in over 100 different operas, musicals, oratorios and concerts at venues including Tanglewood Music Center, Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Opera and many more. Next month, he’ll begin rehearsals for the lead role, Tamino, in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at Opéra Louisiane in Baton Rouge. 

But meanwhile, the singer Opera News calls a “golden tenor” is making a different kind of appearance in Yellow Springs. 

On Friday, Sept. 29, Bakari will be featured at the Little Art Theatre in conversation with John Fleming, founder of Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse. The event is part of the Little Art’s new “Homecoming” series, which welcomes back successful Yellow Springers for an evening of conversation and celebration. Young adult author Chris Tebbetts kicked off the series last spring.

The Sept. 29 event opens at 7 p.m. with a reception in the Little Art lobby, catered by Wheat Penny Oven and Bar. In the main portion of the evening, Fleming, an early mentor, will interview Bakari about his life and career, followed by audience questions. Bakari will then sing two short selections from his new album, released by Naxos Records and currently under Grammy consideration. 

Tickets are $30, and can be purchased in advance at the Little Art box office.

As it happens, the event falls on the date of the fourth anniversary of the Little Art’s reopening, after its half-million dollar renovation in 2013. Bakari said he’s pleased to “come home” to celebrate the theater and Yellow Springs.

The evening is not a performance, he emphasized, with a smile. He’s performed in Yellow Springs previously, but the Little Art event has a different purpose: to give hometown audiences a chance to hear about the artistic path and growth of one of their own.

“I love the aspect of hearing how people got from here to there,” Little Art Executive Director Jenny Cowperthwaite said.

In Bakari’s case, a few factors stand out. He grew up in a family that sang and played piano together, and he developed his own musical passions at a young age. Still in elementary school, he saw a group of young jazz musicians, Serious Young Musicians, led by Daytonian Tumust Allison, perform at Antioch College.

“I thought, I want to do that,” he recalled. 

“That” meant play the trumpet, and he did, playing both trumpet and clarinet in school band from fifth through 12th grades. Former Yellow Springs schools band director Michael Ruddell was a dedicated mentor and key influence, according to Bakari.

Also crucial to his early artistic development was his participation in Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse, or YSKP. That came about quite casually, with founder Fleming encouraging Bakari’s mother to bring her son to audition. Six-year-old Bakari was cast in YSKP’s first-ever show, “Dick Tracy: the Musical,” in 1995, and performed with YSKP for the next six years.

“If there wasn’t a kids theater in town, theater likely wouldn’t have gained my interest,” Bakari said, crediting Fleming with exposing many young villagers to the art form.

At 15, Bakari saw his first opera, Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” at Dayton Opera. Playing in the title role was Lester Lynch, an African-American baritone from Ohio. The experience was riveting.

“I thought, ‘people like me do this,’” Bakari recalled, adding that he has since sung with Lynch.

Yet it was not — quite — a “eureka” moment. Bakari’s future still seemed wide open in high school. He loved sports, especially football and soccer; he performed in high school musicals; he played, with increasing seriousness, the clarinet. He deepened his musical skills at Friends Music Camp, as well as camps at the College of Wooster and Indiana University.

As a high school junior, he began thinking about auditioning to play clarinet in college. Then his piano teacher Karen Gorden, a renowned conductor and musical director, made a quiet suggestion.

“I would consider going for voice,” she told him. She had seen him in high school musicals and believed he had serious talent, according to Bakari.

The suggestion took him by surprise. “It wasn’t something I knew I wanted,” he said, adding that Yellow Springs did not then have a school choir.

Local resident Bev Logan introduced him to Rebecca Helm, then-registrar at Antioch College, who had training in opera and voice. Though Helm stayed in Yellow Springs for just a year, her influence was decisive.

“She was an angel dropped down to teach me how to sing,” Bakari said, with a laugh.

He got into several college voice programs, choosing Boston University, where he graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s in music education. A master’s in vocal performance at Juilliard followed in 2013, then an unfolding career that’s already taken some startling leaps into major classical and contemporary opera roles. 

As a singer, Bakari is particularly drawn to new music. Contrary to popular perceptions of opera as static and antiquated, the art form is thriving, he said. The United States is second only to Germany in the world for numbers of opera performances, according to Bakari. New operas are written all the time, with fresh stories and innovative music.

“So many operas are telling new stories about people who haven’t traditionally been written about,” he said. 

That opens doors for him and other singers of color. “I feel grateful composers today are writing operas for people who look like me,” Bakari, who is of Tanzanian and Filipino heritage, said. At the same time, music directors are casting singers of color in classical roles — witness Bakari’s forthcoming appearance as the prince in “The Magic Flute.” 

The role of race and racism in opera is a “complex and divisive and nuanced issue,” he said, citing mostly positive personal experiences and wide opportunities in the field.

Earlier this year, he sang in “The Long Walk,” a new opera about a U.S. soldier returning from Iraq. He will be singing in another production of “The Long Walk” in 2018, at the Pittsburgh Opera. Even more personally meaningful is his starring role in “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” upcoming at the Arizona Opera in the fall of 2018. 

That opera tells the story of Parker’s life and artistic vision in an unconventional and deeply moving way, Bakari said. 

“To perform as Charlie, in a role written for tenor — it’s a dream come true,” he said.

As a professional singer, Bakari spends much of his time on the road. Though he lives in Harlem, he’s rarely home. He auditions frequently, and when he’s hired by an opera company, typically for a month at a time, he goes where the work is — whether that’s Pittsburgh or Portland, Germany, Italy or Israel. Bakari also teaches voice, both in New York and while traveling.

While Bakari didn’t always know he would end up as a theater artist, he now can’t imagine life any other way. 

“I don’t like using the word ‘work’ to describe what I do,” he said. “Creating art in this way is so extraordinarily enjoyable for me.”

Even as a child, he remembers being affected by music in a particularly intense and personal way. “I felt the music more deeply,” he recalled. 

It is that feeling that makes him an artist, he believes.

“An artist is somebody who communicates his or her thoughts, feelings and perceptions — and the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of humanity — through an artistic medium,” Bakari said.

Being an artist, even at a high level, is not about being “the best” technically and aesthetically, but about something deeper and more valuable, he reflected. 

“We’re communicating our humanity. As artists, we need to be in touch with that.”

Contact: ahackett@ysnews.com

Addiction, poverty, sexual abuse. 

The themes that run through the five short films created by incarcerated women through the Pens to Pictures project — which is coming to the Little Art Theatre on Thursday evening, Nov. 2 — are difficult topics.

Aspects of the stories can be rough, agreed project founder, Wright State University Assistant Professor Chinonye Chukwu, but the overarching quality that weaves them together — and ultimately transcends the subject matter — is their humanity.

“These are all human stories,” Chukwu said in a recent phone interview. “You don’t have to be incarcerated to relate.” 

An award-winning filmmaker who teaches in WSU’s motion pictures department, Chukwu said the primary experience of the women’s stories is one of isolation.

“Bang” depicts a woman with two starving children and no job who has been rejected by nearly everyone.

“The Devastating Game” confronts sexual abuse.

“Love or Loyalty” explores the relationship of cellmates as one prepares for release.

“For They Know Not” follows a young woman battling heroin addiction.

“Trans-Parent” is seen through the eyes of a child who has been left to care for her two younger siblings.

“They figure out how to survive,” Chukwu said of the films’ protagonists.

Each of the five women whose films will be screened Nov. 2 at the Little Art were inmates at Dayton Correctional Institution when they signed up for a screenwriting class initiated by Chukwu in 2016.

The participants started by writing a short story, which they then turned into a screenplay. Each was then paired with a Wright State film student or alumna who worked closely with her partner to complete tasks that couldn’t be done inside the prison walls, particularly the filming, which Chuckwa said was completed in 10 days in the Dayton area. Nevertheless, the incarcerated women created the story-boards, oversaw actor auditions and then edited the footage to produce the final films. 

Jaimie Ochs, the creator of “Trans-Parent,” who was released this past March after serving 10 years in prison, said that the only writing she had ever done before Chukwu’s class was “just for fun,” and the filmmaking that followed was a whole new world.

Speaking by phone from her home in Dayton, where she is working and going to school full-time in computer engineering, Ochs said that she wanted to make her film from a child’s point of view, because she wanted “to give voice” to a someone who doesn’t “always get to tell their side of the story.” Like many of the women in DCI, she said. “The women there don’t always have a platform to share their voices,” Och said. 

Often unheard and unseen by the outside world, it’s possible to “lose sight of their humanity,” she said. “They’re stigmatized for being criminals, for being cruel.” Yet her experience behind bars revealed that many are “humble, caring, spiritual people who just want an opportunity to have a better life.”

The Pens to Pictures program not only gave her a way to share her creative voice while in prison, but also gave her a “network and support system” that has helped her in transitioning to life outside.

Chukwu said that everyone involved found the project transformative. “I think we all grew. We all were empowered,” she said. Most significant was the lesson that everyone has the “potential to be change agents in the world.”

Co-hosting the Little Art screening Nov. 2 are Antioch College’s Prison Justice Initiative and the Hope Thru Harmony Women’s Choir at Dayton Correctional Institution, founded and directed by Yellow Springs resident Catherine Roma.

Emily Steinmetz, an assistant professor of anthropology at Antioch College, is part of the Prison Justice Initiative there, which she said includes several projects.

Books to Prisons is one that was started by students a couple of years ago, she said. What began as an effort to send packages of used books to prisoners in Ohio has expanded to facilities across the country.

Patrons of the Little Art screening are asked to donate books to the project. Steinmetz said that all genres are welcome. “The only thing [the recipients have] in common is that they’re in prison,” she said. That said, the most frequent request is for dictionaries,” she added.

Another piece of Antioch’s prison initiative is an “inside-outside” class, which is taught once a year by Steinmetz and comprised of undergraduates and incarcerated women who meet together once a week. Other projects include working with the DCI residents to produce a periodic newspaper and a program last year that paired students with women serving life sentences to build and maintain a vegetable garden and a pollinator garden.

Steinmetz said that as an educator she feels it’s important “for students to actually see what it’s like” for those in prison. The Pens to Pictures project helps extend some of those lessons into the wider community.

Choir director Roma said she was eager to bring the films to Yellow Springs for several reasons.

“Number one, I think the films are quite amazing,” she said.

They share stories that have not been told, and they give voice to women who are often unheard and forgotten.

What’s more, she said she admires Chukwu’s work “using her gifts as a film director and as a teacher … to teach women who are inside how they can learn to use their talents.”

“Programming in our prisons is so invaluable,” Roma added. “Education is so invaluable, arts education is so invaluable [in] training women in terms of restorative justice, in terms of returning women to the community.”

“I want the world to know that this is happening, and it is happening locally.”

In her own work in prisons, including leading choirs in two other Ohio facilities, Roma said she has “learned there are reasons we need to be critical and learn as much as we can about our prisons — because they are our prisons.”

She noted that “90 percent of those who are incarcerated are going to get out.” They may well be our neighbors, co-workers and family members. Giving them skills and tools to help them be successful benefits the whole community.

“These women are real to me,” she said, adding that Beverly Fears, the creator of “The Devastating Game,” who has also since been released, was a member of Roma’s prison choir, and Aimee Wissman, who made “For They Know Not,” was in a reading-writing group Roma helped facilitate. “I’ve met her mother and her daughter,” she said.

“When we say in Yellow Springs ‘our community,’ I just want to be cognizant of the fact that our community is a a little bit bigger than that. … Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of our ‘network of mutuality.’ Our network of mutuality is not just 3,700 people in Yellow Springs.”

Contact: csimmons@ysnews.com

In the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the first time that Jesus meets the Roman procurator who will sentence him to death is during a song called “Pilate and Christ.” For Ted Neeley, who returns to the Little Art Theatre for special viewings of the film on Nov. 10 and 11 at 7 p.m., and a sing-along on Nov. 12 at 2 p.m., this scene was shared for decades by his dear friend, Barry Dennen. Just a few days before Neeley and I recently spoke, Barry had died suddenly. 

Neeley has now lost his two best friends in the world; Carl Anderson played Judas until his death from cancer in 2004. For a man who has sung the rock opera thousands upon thousands of times, who is generous beyond measure to those who think of him as a living avatar of Christ, these events post-Barry are a chance for Neeley to talk about the significant influence of his dear friends. 

On the News website at ysnews.com, you’ll find a piece about the conversation Neeley and I had regarding God and Christ. Here, though, I want to share a story Neeley related, often peppering it with “a long story gettin’ longer” as he added new details, about his friends. 

Years ago, Neeley was starring in a production of “Tommy” in Los Angeles. They were in the final week of rehearsals when Neeley heard that acclaimed director Norman Jewison was in town casting for the upcoming film version of “Superstar.” Neeley, who had first been an understudy and then starred as Jesus in the Broadway production, wanted to get word to Jewison that “a bowlegged, screaming drummer from Texas” wanted to be part of the film, even if it was to sweep up on the set. 

Neeley reached out to his agent, asking that the latter invite Jewison to a performance of “Tommy.” Neeley insisted, however, that the agent not tell him when Jewison was coming, for fear nerves would get the better of him. “Tommy” is a very physical show, and Neeley is not a dancer. He was, however, pitched and tossed between muscular dancers as a pinball during the “Underscore.” One dancer responsible for catching him was out during the first Sunday performance, and the understudy stepped in. Both Neeley and the understudy misjudged a toss, falling onto the set and were knocked out cold. 

Norman Jewison came to the next show, in which Neeley was replaced by his understudy.  

Neeley’s agent was apoplectic, but after hearing the reasons, arranged for Neeley to meet Jewison at a hotel before the latter returned to London. He advised Neeley, though, that the show was already cast. Ever an honest and genuine soul, Neeley replied that he just wanted to thank the esteemed director for making a film version of the rock opera. 

Neeley went to the hotel, had a quick conversation with Jewison through his room door, and was directed to the coffee shop in the lobby. Not a regular coffee drinker, Neeley consumed an entire pot before concluding that Jewison was not coming, a gentle rebuke for the previous night. Paying for the check, Neeley felt a tap on his shoulder. There stood Norman Jewison. 

A conversation unfolded in which Jewison made it clear that the principals were cast; when Neeley offered to pay for a screen test, which he couldn’t afford and didn’t know what it entailed, Jewison laughed heartily. Neeley left thinking all was settled, and he was not to be part of the film.

Several months later, Neeley and Carl Anderson were rehearsing for the first ever national tour of “Superstar.” Neeley received a call from “Norman,” whom Neeley thought was his uncle. Identities confirmed, Jewison said that “many people” were telling him to give Neeley a screen test, which he was going to do. However, Neeley couldn’t tell anyone. When he learned that he was being tested for Jesus, Neeley asked that Carl be tested with him. Jewison agreed. 

The pair was flown to London. Carl performed “Heaven on Their Minds.” Neeley, “Gethsemane.” The crew burst into applause, and Jewison requested they do “The Argument,” which Carl and Neeley had just been rehearsing. As they flew back, the friends marveled at how they had just undergone the experience of a lifetime.

A week later, a 3 a.m. phone call from Jewison informed them that they were his Jesus and Judas. 

While in London, pre-recording before going to film on location in Israel, Neeley, Carl, Barry and Norman went to dinner together. Jewison said, “I told you that many people had spoken to me about needing to give you a screen test. What made me make my final decision to call Neeley, who then recommended Carl, was Barry Dennen.”

Neeley says they toasted Barry that night with fine Italian wine, and that he has been toasting him ever since.  

**This post has been updated to reflect Carl Anderson’s death in 2004, not 2005 as originally reported. 

After collecting $75,000 in a single day last November, an effort to raise money for local nonprofit groups is returning to the village for a second year this holiday season.

The local initiative is affiliated with the global #GivingTuesday movement, an online campaign that falls on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving — Nov. 28 this year — and which was founded to counter the commercialism of the season’s more consumer-oriented “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.”

The focus is on giving, rather than buying, and nonprofit organizations and charitable causes are the beneficiaries.

Participating groups solicit contributions through such social media sites as Facebook and Twitter, which link potential givers to online donation sites.

In Yellow Springs, where local groups are allied under the umbrella of #YSGivingTuesday, the site is http://www.ysgivingtuesday.org.

Locally organizers were thrilled with the $75,000 — which included a $10,000 matching grant from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation — raised last year among 16 participating local groups.

“That’s huge,” said Dawn Boyer, the director of advancement for Yellow Springs schools, who is a member of the #YSGivingTuesday planning committee.

“That was definitely beyond our expectations” for the local effort’s first year, Boyer said in a recent interview.

Created in 2012 by the New York City-based Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact and the United Nations Foundation, the #GivingTuesday campaign has continued to grow each subsequent year as more organizations and municipalities participate. Globally, last year, the movement raised $177 million, through 1,640,000 individual gifts, in more than 98 countries.

In Yellow Springs, the average amount received by each local organization was $3,700, with Antioch College raising the most at $27,000, according to Boyer.

Also important for the nonprofits, “most organizations reported they got new donors” through the 2016 campaign, Boyer said. The average number of new donors per group was six, which for small organizations is significant, she said.

Chuck Taylor, president of Chamber Music in Yellow Springs, reported that his organization “ended up with 18 donors, including five completely new to CMYS,” according to a posting on last year’s #YSGivingTuesday website.

Krista Magaw, executive director of Tecumseh Land Trust, said this week that the land preservation group had 37 donors, with seven who “were brand new to us.”

Attracting new donors, particularly younger people who are plugged into social media and who turn to online sources not only for information, but also to conduct their business, is an important part of the initiative, said Jeannamarie Cox, the executive director of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.

Cox, who had just come on board at the Community Foundation when last year’s campaign was launched, joined the #YSGivingTuesday planning committee this year. Also on the committee are Ara Beal, the managing artistic director of YS Kids Playhouse, and Kathryn Hitchcock, representing the local chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, or NAMI.

“It’s not so much about big donations,” Cox said of the online day of giving. It’s more about “connecting through social media and building donor bases.”

The Community Foundation serves as a hub for contributions and oversees the financial distribution.

The Foundation also is again providing a $10,000 grant, although this year’s distribution will be different. In 2016, the grant was divided by a formula based on funds raised. This year, “the $10,000 will be split equally among participating groups who complete key steps in getting ready,” Cox said. Those steps include having a plan and setting goals for the contributions. Participating groups also must be tax-exempt and be able to accept online donations.

Boyer said the Community Foundation grant provided an important boost to last year’s fledgling local effort. The grant’s focus this year, said Cox, is helping groups improve their fundraising profile “and to work together.”

The number of local groups participating in this year’s #YSGivingTuesday ucampaign has grown to 24. Only one of the original 16 — the Antioch Writer’s Workshop — is no longer part of the local effort, and that’s because the organization moved out of town, Boyer said.

Each of the participating organizations are identified on the ysgivingtuesday.org website with their logos. A visitor to the site can click on the individual logos to learn more about the group or contribute to its cause.

The website also offers a one-stop-giving experience, Boyer said. Donors may go to the site wanting to contribute to a particular nonprofit and then see listed one or more other groups they want to support.

Cox noted that giving to multiple organizations is made simpler in that donors will only need to enter their payment information once.

And while the website is up, the actual giving will take place from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28, Boyer said. A bar graph on the site will reflect the level of contributions “in real time,” she added.

As the head of a small nonprofit, Tecumseh Land Trust’s Krista Magaw said she appreciates #YSGivingTuesday’s efforts toward building the donor lists and extending the networks of participating groups.

“For a lot of our organizations, it’s really an easy vehicle to plug into and get access to a new audience,” she said this week.

In particular, it helps “reach out to more young people who are used to getting their information electronically, using social media. … It’s a way for a young person who has not been giving to go to this one place and choose one or two things they care about,” Magaw said.

While the giving focus is online, local organizers recognize that some donors prefer to give the old-fashioned way — in person or with a check. To accommodate those contributors, a #YSGivingTuesday “headquarters” will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Yellow Springs Senior Center. Representatives of participating nonprofits will be on hand to accept personal donations. Of course, contributions are welcome any day or time of year, but in order to count as part of #YSGivingTuesday, Boyer said that donations must be made during the designated 24 hours.

Organizers agree that the effort not only supports the participating organizations, but also strengthens the community,

“It’s much more of a collaboration,” Community Foundation’s Cox said, noting that Bing Design, among others, “has been absolutely terrific in helping us” with such tasks as website support and promotional materials.

And the collaboration among the nonprofits “has just been great,” she said. That connection “is fundamental for the long haul and more sustainable beyond the one-day event.”

Contact: csimmons@ysnews.com

The 2017 #YSGiving Tuesday participating organizations are:

• The 365 Project
• The Antioch School
• Antioch College
• Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions
• Chamber Music Yellow Springs
• Feminist Health Fund
• Glen Helen
• James A. McKee Association
• John Bryan Community Pottery
• Little Art Theatre
• NAMI of Clark, Greene and Madison Counties
• The Riding Centre
• Tecumseh Land Trust
• World House Choir
• Yellow Springs Arts Council
• Yellow Springs Community Children’s Center
• The Yellow Springs Community Foundation
• Yellow Springs Home, Inc.
• Yellow Springs Library Association
• Yellow Springs Schools
• Yellow Springs Senior Center
• Yellow Springs Youth Baseball
• YS Kids Playhouse
• YS PetNet

Obama Farewell, by Tom Bachtell

“Yellow Springs was in full flower,” Bachtell said in a recent interview. “And I was taking it all in.”

Bachtell, who now lives in Chicago, will speak about how spending his teenage years in the village has influenced his arts-rich life at the upcoming “Homecoming” event at the Little Art Theatre on Friday, April 13. The event begins at 7 p.m. with a reception hosted by the Wheat Penny Oven and Bar, followed by a welcome at 7:45 and presentation by Bachtell, along with a Q & A, at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $25, and can be reserved online at http://www.littleart.com/homecoming or at the theater.

An artist, musician and dancer, Bachtell plans to incorporate all the art forms he loves into the program, he said recently. He’ll show many of his own drawings and illustrations from The New Yorker magazine — where he’s illustrated the “Talk of the Town” section for the past 20 years — along with the work of those who have influenced him. A classically trained pianist who performs with chamber music groups in Chicago, he’ll also include music in the program.

And he’ll perform several swing dances with Nicole Woods, a friend and dancing partner who will accompany him on the trip.

How do all of these artistic pursuits relate to Yellow Springs?

“It was a nurturing environment. The adults around me were nurturing,” Bachtell said. “I was folk dancing, making music, doing theater. I gained a lot of confidence from that time.”

One of those adults was music teacher Shirley Mullins, with whom Bachtell has stayed in close touch. He’s also still close to his high school friends Polly Case and Wendy Champney, who both went on to become professional musicians in Europe.

Bachtell initially traveled the music route too, training as a pianist at the Cleveland Institute of Music. And while he continues to perform in chamber music groups, he veered toward art as a profession.

Making art, too, was connected with his Yellow Springs years. The vitality of the village and its many interesting people helped foster his lifelong love of people-watching and observing human behavior, according to Bachtell, an interest directly linked to his current work as a caricaturist.

Bachtell was just starting out as an illustrator in Chicago when he created a caricature of writer Tom Wolfe for the publication “Advertising Age.” The drawing caught the eye of New Yorker art editors, who were trying to beef up the magazine’s art. They contacted Bachtell to do an illustration, beginning an association that’s lasted more than 25 years.

That partnership can be seen each week in the magazine’s “Talk of the Town” section, where Bachtell contributes three caricatures of individuals spotlighted by the “Talk of the Town” vignettes. The process is intense, he said. Each week he’s given a heads-up on subjects to draw, and “I’ll get some copy if I’m lucky,” he said. He next dives into research on the individuals, studying photos and film clips.

“I see it as a way of getting to know my subject,” Bachtell said.

Then he starts sketching, trying different ideas. Often, he spends about a day researching and sketching each subject, after which “I send a lot of different versions, there’s a lot of back and forth” to the magazine. After three days, that week’s process is over.

Along with the New Yorker, Bachtell has seen his work published in many national and international publications, including Newsweek, Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Poetry and the Evening Standard in London.
He’s also illustrated books, including creating the cover of “Trump and Me,” by Mark Singer, and “When I Knew,” edited by Robert Trachtenberg. He’s created ad campaigns for Land’s End, the late department store Marshall Field’s and the University of Chicago chamber music series, and exhibited his work in a range of places, including the offices of The New Yorker in New York City, the Bedford Arts Center and the historic Water Tower Gallery in Chicago.

Bachtell’s talk will include his reflections of growing up in a town inspired by utopians, including the Owenites, who settled in Glen Helen for a period in the early 1800s.

That vision of utopia had something to do with the Bachtell family’s arrival here. His father, Sam, was an aerospace engineer working for Goodyear in Hudson, Ohio, when he became disenchanted with the military nature of his work due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. Sam Bachtell was a friend and colleague of longtime villager Chuck Colbert, who invited Bachtell to come work for him in Yellow Springs. Sam Bachtell and his late wife, Mary Jane, decided to take a chance on a new job and a new town. It was a good fit, and Sam Bachtell still lives here.

As well as bringing his family to town, that utopian vision has inspired his own connection to humanity, leading to his life in the arts, Tom Bachtell said.

“Very few places are founded on an idea,” Bachtell said, stating that the founding idea of Yellow Springs had to do with “finding commonality, of loving the other, embracing the unknown. It was about being able to live together.”

The Little Art Theatre will host screenings of classic 1973 rock opera film “Jesus Christ Superstar” Friday through Sunday, March 27–29. The three-day event will feature Q&A from actors Ted Neeley and Barry Dennen, who played Jesus and Pilate, respectively, in the film. The stop in Yellow Springs is part of a nationwide screening tour showcasing the restored digital print of the film, and allowing fans to meet Neeley and Dennen, as well as other cast members in select cities.

“Jesus Christ Superstar” began its life as a rock opera album, with lyrics and music penned by stage legends Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. When the album was later developed as a stage production, Ted Neeley, who had previously starred in “Hair,” auditioned for the Broadway production — as Judas. The part of Judas went to Ben Vereen, however, and Neeley was cast as understudy for Jesus. Neeley took on the title role in the stage play’s Los Angeles production, and was cast as Jesus in the film soon after.

Over the 42 years since the film was produced, Neeley, along with several of his fellow film cast mates, has continued to portray Jesus on the stage in revivals of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Most recently, Neeley finished up a year of performing “Jesus Christ Superstar” on stages across Italy at the end of February.

On Wednesday, March 4, Neeley spoke with Lauren Shows via Skype audio about his experiences with the film and the play and what playing Jesus for 40 years has meant to him, among other things. Listen below.

A full story on the Yellow Springs screenings will appear in the March 15 issue of the News. For more information on Neeley and the 2015 screening tour, visit http://www.tedneeley.com.

(Psst, Superfans: if you’d like to hear the full, unedited interview, listen up below via SoundCloud.)

Just in time for Easter, locals will have the chance to snap a selfie with Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

The stars who portrayed the Biblical figures in the 1973 film “Jesus Christ Superstar” will attend a weekend of screenings at the Little Art Theatre, March 27–29.

After the movie, Ted Neeley, who played Jesus of Nazareth in the groundbreaking rock opera, and Barry Dennen, who was Pontius Pilate, will sign autographs and answer questions about their lives and careers.

Neeley, who still tours in the stage version of the musical, has played the role of Jesus more than 5,000 times and has been changed by the experience, he said in a telephone interview this week.

“When you play the most important character in the history of the world and people perceive you that way, it affects you,” said Neeley, who is 71. “Even to pretend to walk in those sandals every day of the week, I am lifted and elevated.”

Tickets are available for screenings of a newly-remastered digital version of the film  7 p.m. Friday, March 27, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 29 (Saturday evening is sold out). The screenings include an hour-long, pre-film Q&A session, as well as a post-film general meet-and-greet and autograph signing. To purchase tickets ahead of time, which is recommended, visit http://www.littleart.com. In addition, VIP passes are on sale for Friday and Sunday which include a pre-film VIP-only meet and greet with Neeley and Dennen, along with memorabilia. For a little more money, an attendee can even be guaranteed a seat next to the stars.

According to event organizer and former village resident Vanessa Query, no matter what package attendees choose, “hugs are included.” Query, a “Jesus Christ Superstar” superfan, is organizing screenings around the country from her home of Providence, R.I. because she knows the film still resonates with people everywhere more than 40 years after it was released.

“It’s so awesome that people still connect with this,” Query said. “For me it’s the quality of the music … I’m not Christian but I love that it gets Jesus to people who wouldn’t normally care about him.”

Originally a concept album and Broadway show, “Jesus Christ Superstar” was an early example of rock opera, with music by Andrew Lloyd Weber and lyrics by Tim Rice. The film, shot on location in Israel, features stunning cinematography of the  Holy Land desert juxtaposed with ’70s fashion and flair. In one number Jesus’ disciples sing “What’s the Buzz?” while Judas dons bellbottoms.

The film is based upon Biblical accounts of Jesus during the last seven days of his life and originally sparked controversy because of its modern touches and because it showed Jesus as a man, not as the Christ, Neeley explained.

“It’s a concept about Jesus as a man, which is not challenging the deity,” Neeley said. “It’s looking at him through the eyes of contemporaries who saw him as a man prior to crucifixion and resurrection. And everyone can see elements of themselves [in Jesus] — his fears and desires, his questions and doubts.”

Neeley remembers pushing through crowds of protesters each night when he took the stage as Jesus in the Broadway version, which preceded the film in the early 1970s. Controversy over the project continued until the film’s director Norman Jewison sought, and received, the blessing of Pope Paul VI prior to the film’s theatrical release, Neeley said.

“The Pope said, ‘Not only do I love your film, but because it is set to music, I think it will bring the next generation to Christianity,’” Neeley recalled.

During a year-long run of the musical in Europe, Neeley met the current pope, Francis. He recently returned to his California home in preparation for a U.S. screenings tour of the film.

Reflecting on his life, Neeley said he is blessed and grateful for the opportunity to play Jesus, which has affected him spiritually and personally. Neeley met his wife during the filming of “Jesus Christ Superstar” — she was a dancer in the movie. And, he says, each time he plays Jesus he does more research to prepare for the role, while it deepens his faith as a Christian. The experience is humbling, he said.

“I know that I’m not Jesus — I am just a rock-and-roll drummer from Texas who can hit high notes,” Neeley said, referring to days in a rock band in the 1960s. In 1969, Neeley was cast in the musical “Hair” which led to his role in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” he said. Neeley is still a musician, and released the album “Rock Opera” last year, which features selected tracks “Tommy” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” among other songs.

Before organizing film screenings, Query had a role in re-connecting cast members of “Jesus Christ Superstar” with her 2009 blog post questioning the whereabouts of Bob Bingham, who played Caiaphas in the film. After false leads that Bingham was a blues singer and old nemesis of Gore Vidal, Query tracked down the real Bingham in upstate New York, where he was retired from the zipper industry. That led to a mini-cast reunion with Bingham and others last year.

From singing along with Mary Magdalene in her bedroom as a young girl, to arranging screenings across the country for the stars, Query is definitely a a “Jesus Christ Superstar fangirl,” she said. And she is thrilled to be able to help other fans meet the stars of a film that they love.

“A huge part of a cult film is the fans,” she said.

Click here for an in-depth audio interview with Neeley.

It’s a weekday afternoon, you have a few free hours, you want to see a movie. Wish the Little Art were open? Now it is.

Yellow Springs’ hometown theater recently debuted weekday matinees — 3 p.m. showings Monday through Thursday of the week’s feature film for the matinee price of $7. The first weekday matinee drew one viewer. Attendance doubled on the second day. Executive Director Jenny Cowperthwaite hopes that, as word spreads, daytime film lovers will “vote with their feet,” as she put it in a recent interview.

The idea for 3 p.m. weekday matinees came from a mentor of hers who operates an independent theater in Waterville, Maine, she said. That theater tried the unorthodox show time, and “it took about a year to catch on” — but catch on it did, she said.

Weekday matinees are just one way the Little Art is experimenting with programming this spring. Another new initiative is Music and a Movie, a monthly pairing of live music and a film. Music and a Movie kicked off in March with a performance by local bluegrass band the Corndrinkers and a screening of country music saga “The Winding Stream.” A member of the Corndrinkers proposed the event, which packed the house, and the Little Art decided to carry the idea forward with different music-movie pairings the fourth Thursday of every month. This month, on Thursday, June 23, at 7 p.m., local pop-rock band the Speaking Suns will play, followed by a showing at 8 p.m. of the 2007 comedy-drama “Juno,” about a precocious pregnant teen.

“We’re excited about having music in the theater,” said Operations and Marketing Manager Brian Housh. The Little Art has a stage and a podium, which gives it flexibility for music and other live events, he said. For example, popular Dayton-based drag troupe the Rubi Girls, which has performed at the Little Art in the past, will perform again during Yellow Springs Pride, later this month.

Trying new movie times and diversifying programming are part of the theater’s ongoing effort to build its audience, he and Cowperthwaite said. Movie attendance is down across the country, according to Cowperthwaite, and the Little Art is not immune to that decline. Involved with the theater since she was 15, she remembers when people would show up to the window, push money through to the cashier and ask, “What’s playing?”

Those days are gone, and movie theaters in the Netflix era have to work harder to appeal to audiences who may, as Housh said, “find it easier to watch a movie at home.”

The Little Art’s slogan is “The best place to watch a movie, together,” and that distills what the theater hopes is its appeal: a community gathering place for enjoying movies, music and other programs in the company of friends, neighbors and strangers. Yellow Springs residents represent the majority of the theater’s audience, as well as the vast majority — roughly 80 percent — of the Friends of the Little Art, the theater’s membership program, which augments ticket sales, concessions and rental fees to fund its operations.

“The environment that Jenny’s built up has created an icon in the community,” Housh said. “People are excited to have an event here.”

Dozens of people, from movie producers to movie enthusiasts, contact the Little Art each year about screening films and hosting events at the theater, said Cowperthwaite, who handles most of those overtures. For example, the theater was contacted this spring by someone involved in the upcoming release of the new Grateful Dead documentary, “Going Furthur,” which is being promoted through a cross-country, festival-like tour. One stop? The Little Art in Yellow Springs.

“We do get lucky,” Housh laughed, explaining that a Facebook connection was responsible for the “Going Furthur” screening, upcoming on Tuesday, June 14. “Everyone’s connected to Yellow Springs through one degree of separation on Facebook,” he claimed.

Social media, managed by Housh, has been a key piece of the theater’s marketing outreach. “We get a lot of traction with social media,” Housh said, adding that the immediacy of the medium allows people to decide, spur of the moment, to come to something at the Little Art. “For our size, we’re a marketing machine,” Cowperthwaite laughed.

The theater’s core demographic is 50 to 80, she said — “people who grew up going to the movies.” Younger audiences are harder to attract, not just for the Little Art, but for smaller theaters everywhere, she said. This spring’s new programming aims to draw in a younger crowd. Music and a Movie, with its element of live music, seeks to engage younger (and also older) people, Cowperthwaite said, and the new weekday matinees could appeal to anyone with a flexible daytime schedule — not just retirees, but stay-at-home parents and the increasing number of villagers who work from home. To reach families, the Little Art is offering weekly Family Matinees (Fridays at 1 p.m.) through the summer, beginning this Friday, June 3, with “Shaun the Sheep Movie.” And its long-running Meal and a Movie program, in partnership with the Sunrise Café, targets the local “date night” market.

Beyond weekday matinees, the Little Art is contemplating other shifts in show times, said Cowperthwaite. The theater’s 9 p.m. screening is typically its least popular, and Cowperthwaite would like to conduct online polling to determine moviegoers’ preferred times.

And beyond movies themselves, other uses of the venue, restored to Art Deco elegance in 2013, are becoming increasingly important to the theater. Music and a Movie may become, in certain months, simply music, perhaps with a silent video backdrop, Housh said. The theater collaborates with lots of local nonprofits, he added, citing Community Solutions, the Resilience Network and the 365 Project as groups that have used the theater for special screenings followed by community conversations on local issues.

In everything that the Little Art tries, “our main driver is getting people into the theater,” Cowperthwaite said — “butts in seats,” she clarified, with a laugh. The theater, which became a nonprofit in 2009, relies on its board’s efforts and the financial support of 20 local business sponsors and around 450 Friends of the Little Art memberships to survive and thrive as the silver screen on Xenia Avenue.

For as long as it’s around, the Little Art will be that silver screen — but if it continues on its current course, it may become much more.

“Diversifying is important,” Cowperthwaite said. “Who knows what we’ll be in five years?”