Emily Giancarlo
Kentucky Theatre manager Fred Mills, center, with Friends of the Kentucky Theatre co-chairs Lisa Meek and Hayward Wilkirson.
Shuttered since October 2020, the Kentucky Theatre has fallen on hard times recently largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now managed by the nonprofit Friends of the Kentucky Theatre, the group is preparing to reopen the theatre on January 28 with a revamped business plan and is also looking toward its centennial celebration in October. Rest assured that cherished traditions such as midnight screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on Halloween will continue, along with new programs and efforts designed to keep the Kentucky a vibrant fixture in downtown Lexington for decades to come.
We spoke with longtime theatre manager Fred “Mr. Kentucky” Mills along with Friends of the Kentucky Theatre co-chairs Hayward Wilkirson and Lisa Meek to learn more.
When do you expect the theatre to fully reopen to the public?
Hayward Wilkirson: Ideally, we’d like to have a big grand reopening after being closed for so long; but, due to COVID still lingering, we don’t feel safe in doing so. That being said, we’re opening in a smaller capacity later this month [on January 28] once we get our projection systems fixed. Right now the sound processors are shot on both of our projectors, leaving us limited on what kinds of films we can show. We can show DVDs and Blu-rays, but virtually all first-run films we can’t. We’re trying to make lemonade out of these lemons, which I think we can do because there’s been over a year’s worth of short films that haven’t come to the Kentucky Theatre or Lexington yet at all.
It sounds like you’re planning to keep things small until this fall when, in October, you can hopefully have a bigger celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of the theatre?
Fred Mills: Exactly. Like Hayward said, we shouldn’t have any problems finding films to play. However, one big issue has just been getting our audience, which tends to be a bit older, back out to the theatre. Our visitation numbers have been down significantly since the onset of the pandemic, but we’re hoping, with a return to more regular programming, that traffic will improve. The new Spiderman movie just did $83 million in its first weekend at the box office, so it seems like people may be growing more open to returning to movie theatres.
Are you planning to offer any programming other than films?
Mills: Yes. We also plan on having more film festivals and bringing live music back to the theatre, which is something that we were set to partner with the Burl on in early 2020 before the pandemic hit. Their plan was to put on seated shows at the theatre with bigger-name artists that they couldn’t fit inside their much smaller room. Luckily, they’re still interested in exploring a partnership. We hope to have more news on that front soon.
Fred, would you say this is the most difficult period the theatre has gone through in your near 60 years working here?
Mills: Believe it or not, I don’t think this has been my toughest time at the theatre. In October 1987, a disgruntled employee of a restaurant next to the theatre broke in and set the place on fire. It was a cold and windy night, causing the fire to spread to the whole block. Fortunately, once they cleared the fire, there was very little, if any, structural damage to the theatre. However, everything inside the building from front to back was covered in a thick layer of black ash from all of the smoke, rendering the theatre inoperable. At the time the owners promised to repair and reopen the theatre, but after months of inaction the building fell further into disrepair.
Emily Giancarlo
The Kentucky Theatre reopened in April 1992, nearly five years after a fire devastated the historic theatre.
Eventually a bank across the street in charge of several trusts on the land took over the theatre and set out to fix it up. At first there was little progress due to the building’s decrepit state, but eventually Lexington Mayor Scotty Baesler [1982-93] realized how important the theater was to downtown and sought to make it more of a focal point in the area.
The theatre reopened in April 1992, close to five years after the fire. We’ve had a good run of almost 30 years from 1992 until having to close in October 2020 due to rising COVID numbers and declining attendance. That’s where Hayward, Lisa and the Friends of the Kentucky Theatre come in. They’ve been instrumental in working toward getting the theatre back on its feet.
You just touched on the declining attendance numbers during COVID. In addition to hesitancy, another reason those numbers have lacked is due to the number of studios releasing their movies to streaming platforms at the same time they hit theatres. How do you plan to counter that?
Meek: That’s something we’ve thought quite a bit about. You can stream almost everything from home in your pajamas, so what is it that’s going to get you up and out the door to the theatre? We think part of the solution is specially curated events. One way we plan to do this is by partnering with the University of Kentucky Art Museum to host Q&As, discussion panels and other engaging content around the films we show.
Emily Giancarlo
Longtime Theatre Manager Fred Mills
The theatre has done similar events in the past that have been a hit. [UK Art Museum Director] Stuart Horodner and the actors themselves aren’t going to come knocking on your doors to tell you about the films, so you’ll have to come on down to find out. You can even wear your pajamas if you’d like.
I think of events like these almost like the extras or director cut on a DVD. It’s content that gives me more background on the stories and characters of a film, which I think our audience really appreciates.
Another way we’d like to eventually combat theatre fatigue is by building a third micro-cinema, with about 30 seats, that we could use to take risks on films that may be a little more obscure or rare. We’d also like to bring in movies that we’ve missed from the past couple of years due to COVID. We also want to do more short film festivals with three to five films all centering around a certain topic, time frame or underlying theme. We’d further try to engage our audience and tie the films together through specially curated Q&As, discussion panels and other events. We’d love to explore topics from LGBTQ and Black films to romance films, movies set in Kentucky and more — the possibilities are endless!
Wilkirson: We’re ambitious for the theatre. We want it to grow in a sustainable way in its second century. One reason we wanted to see the Friends of the Kentucky Theatre slowly transition to a nonprofit structure was we wanted to create an institutional base that didn’t rely on only us. We’re not all going to be here forever, but we want to make sure the theatre survives for another 100 years. In addition to building a micro-cinema, we’d also like to bring a little cafe or wine bar to the theatre. We want to make it a special experience every time you come down to the Kentucky Theatre. We’re also going to introduce a membership program with perks ranging from discounts on admissions and concessions to access to members-only events, discounts to other art houses via the Art House Visiting Member Program, theater tours and more.