Quick 6 with Kentucky Theatre’s Hayward Wilkirson & Lisa Meek

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In 2020, when the Kentucky Theater was two years shy of its 100th birthday, the historic downtown theater’s longtime management group announced that it was retiring.

The announcement came during the height of the pandemic, when many things were uncertain — including, all of a sudden, the future of Lexington’s beloved historic movie theater.

Enter Friends of the Kentucky Theatre, a non-profit organization that had been formulated in 2012 to help support the theater. Co-chaired at the time by Hayward Wilkirson and Lisa Meek, longtime friends and movie fans who had spent countless hours since their college days at the theater, the organization stepped up with a well considered plan to take the theater into a new era.

Since 2021, that organization has managed the day-to-day operations of the theater, with Wilkirson stepping into the full-time role of executive director and Meek providing invaluable support as board chair; longtime theater manager Fred Mills remains an integral part of the operation as well. In those three short years, the theater has transitioned into a non-profit with a growing membership program, employed new marketing and outreach efforts to increase audiences, and maintained a full and diverse calendar of engaging events. While first-run films, from arthouse to blockbusters, are regularly in the programming mix, the theater also curates a rotating array of film series highlighting cult classics and other important films of yesteryear. And in 2023, The Kentucky Theatre launched one of its most ambitious projects yet: the Twelve Lions Film Festival, an international film festival which celebrated its second installment in September. In its second year, the festival has grown exponentially with 800 submissions compared to around 100 in year one.

It’s been a whirlwind three-year period for Wilkinson and Meek, and as the dust is finally settling, Smiley Pete reporter Celeste Lewis caught up with the duo to get some feedback on how things are going with the theater.

Hayward, you’ve been the executive director of the Kentucky Theatre for three years now. How’s it going? What kind of feedback are you receiving from Lexington moviegoers?

HW: It’s been an honor to direct The Kentucky. It’s a LOT of work, more than I imagined, and I imagined it would be a LOT. But what a privilege to be part of the effort to preserve and grow this beloved cultural institution! We’ve had nothing but positive feedback from Lexington moviegoers. Nearly every day, someone stops us in the lobby, or at Kroger, or at the YMCA, to say they appreciate our work.

Lisa, as board chair, what do you see as the biggest challenge facing The Kentucky Theatre and other local historic theaters around the country?

LM: Aside from competing with myriad streaming services, we find that even with a 102-year-old institution, it’s hard to reach folks — especially new students and people who have recently moved to town. Social media is so siloed these days. Even with a huge emphasis on marketing, we know we’re not always getting our message out to our fullest potential audience.

Tell me about some of the creative, new ways you are inviting people to engage with the theatre.

HW: From day one, we knew we had to go the extra mile to revitalize the theater, in the face of a lot of challenges, not the least of which is the ease of streaming movies. For that reason, we try to make film-going a special experience. Part of that is easy because we have a great staff who thinks of our patrons as family. We started our membership program as a way of giving patrons an even greater sense of ownership and investment in the theater. 

LM: And as much as we possibly can, we try to add something extra to the film-goers experience. Sometimes that’s Q&As with filmmakers or film scholars; sometimes it’s costume contests, door prizes and special movie-themed cocktails. And sometimes it’s going all-out to decorate the theater — just wait till October, and you’ll see what I mean.

How do you choose the films shown at The Kentucky?

HW: It’s a team effort, involving Max Morris, our programming coordinator; Lisa; Fred Mills; and myself. Max does an incredible job keeping up with first-run films, and we also pay attention to what other art houses are screening. We also do a lot of curated repertory series. In that case, Lisa, Max and I sit down to develop a theme, then pick the films and program any extras, like Q&As. We also get a lot of great suggestions from our patrons. We can’t always show every suggested film, but we do take the suggestions very seriously. 

Tell me about how the small, independent theaters throughout the country support each other.  

LM: The Art House Convergence is a fantastic organization of people running arthouse theaters that will jump on a group chat to help with a problem. We have receivedgreat tips from the group and been able to return the favor to others. AHC also holds excellent conferences which we have attended twice and come away with very helpful information each time.

What are each of your top three favorite films and why?

HW: Oh, wow. That’s really hard. I can bet that Lisa and I will agree on one film, for sure — “Cinema Paradiso.” We just showed it as part of our Summer Classics series. No film better captures what an independent cinema like The Kentucky means to its community. I love both Fellini’s “8 ½” and a somewhat lesser-known film called “La Grande Belleza.” Notice a pattern here? Seems I really love Italian film.

LM: Definitely “Cinema Paradiso” — I have seen it 20+ times and its tenderness and the regrets of the characters get me every time. “La Grande Bellezza” also beautifully captures the feelings of a person pondering life around his 65th birthday. “The Tree of Life” has an incredible way of showing our connections to each other and the repercussions of our actions.