Mill Mountain Theatre Hires Producing Director

Mill Mountain Theatre took the next step toward coming back live today by announcing it has hired Scott Treadway (right) as its producing artistic director.

Treadway has a solid background in development, artistic directing and acting with the venerable Flat Rock Playhouse near Hendersonville, N.C. He is a member of Actors Equity and has been in more than 140 productions.

According to the Asheville Citizen-Times (where I began as a journalist in the 1960s), "Treadway spent 27 years with Flat Rock Playhouse, becoming a familiar face on that stage, mostly in comedic roles. But last year, he resigned as associate artistic director and actor. Earlier this season, he appeared at N.C. Stage Company in Asheville in the comedy 'Boeing, Boeing.'"

MMT has been all but closed since January of 2009 and in that time has paid most of the debt that caused the closing. It has retained a single employee (Ginger Poole, who was also employed by Flat Rock Playhouse) during that time and has occasionally been host for productions. The theater is expected to open again in 2013.

It is interesting that today's announced grants from the Taubmans in Roanoke ($1.25 million for arts organizations) had $25,000 for Studio Roanoke, which stepped into the void when MMT went black, and nothing for MMT. From what I understand, those approving the grants doubted MMT's ability to come back, and turned down its application. The announcement of grants was made on the very day when the theater hired its new artistic director, a pretty good sign of viability, or at least an anticipated future.