Cast of Characters

Before becoming CEO, Shane Fernando grew up performing and working backstage at the theater. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

The Writer: A man in his mid-40s, on assignment for Our State.

Shane Fernando: CEO of Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts, impeccably dressed.

Thalian Hall: A stately theater and haven for performing arts, almost 166 years old.

Setting: Various locations inside Thalian Hall — the balcony, the attic, the stage, floor seats.

Time: The present.

Scene: We open in WILMINGTON, picturesque port city on the Cape Fear River. Here, the THALIAN ASSOCIATION formed in 1788, giving theater lovers, actors, and dreamers a spiritual home where THALIA, Greek muse of comedy and idyllic poetry, has inspired the players and city for an age and longer.

The stage is dark, save for the ghost light, and set as a beauty parlor for an upcoming performance. It faces hundreds of empty seats. Two balconies hang above a sea of red velvet upholstery and well-worn armrests. Overhead, an elaborate chandelier, a Tiffany blue ceiling. It’s elegant, antique in the way that a historic theater should be, yet touches of modernity show themselves — dimmed stage lights and an octopus of power cables, an LED lamp beside a stack of scripts, the sound and light control board blinking idly.

At Rise: THE WRITER, notebook in hand, enters from the street, pads up a set of carpeted stairs, and steps into the Tony Rivenbark Main Stage auditorium, where SHANE FERNANDO, neat and easy in his suit, greets THE WRITER with a handshake and a question: “Are you ready to meet Thalian Hall?”

• • •

Thalian Hall has always been a centerpiece and shared community space for Wilmington. In 1803, construction bids were taken for what became the Innes Academy here at the corner of Chestnut and Third streets, housing a theater and school. By the 1850s, Wilmington needed a new city hall building, the Innes Academy needed repairs, and the idea of a combination theater-library-municipal headquarters had taken root.

On October 12, 1858, years of design, demolition, and construction saw the Innes Academy swept away and Thalian Hall rise in its place. Soon after, Thalian Hall gained new names — Wilmington Opera House and, later, the Academy of Music — and a new generation of performances by touring theater troupes. It wasn’t long before local theater and dance companies began, too.

“Thalian still serves that multipurpose role,” Fernando says. “We share the building with the city council chambers and a few offices, but that may soon change.”

Thalian Hall is emblematic of Wilmington’s vibrant arts culture.  photograph by Matt Ray Photography

An agreement is being negotiated between Wilmington and Thalian Hall which would see the city consolidate its offices under one roof and transform Thalian Hall into the best version of itself to date: a multistage theater and performing arts space that fills the whole building.

“After 165 years, Thalian Hall will reopen old stages and open new performing spaces,” Fernando says. “This will allow us to serve as a regional performing arts incubator, supporting new playwrights, performers, musicians, dance troupes, and other artists.”

In other words, Thalian Hall will fulfill the vision of generations of theater directors, including the two most recent — Tony Rivenbark, who helmed Thalian for 42 years, and his successor and protégé, Fernando — and cause Thalia herself to beam with pride.

• • •

Truth is, Thalia’s always looked on Wilmington with pride. Since the founding of the Thalian Association in 1788, this city — and the generational iterations of Thalian Hall — has been a fixture in North Carolina’s arts scene.

A cavalcade of lauded and legendary speakers and performers have graced Wilmington’s center stage. Frederick Douglass and Oscar Wilde delivered talks here. The Ziegfeld Follies, Junius Brutus Booth (father of the infamous John Wilkes Booth), Buffalo Bill Cody, Maurice Barrymore, and Marian Anderson entertained thousands. John Philip Sousa shook the building with his compositions. Thomas Edison’s Projectoscope, an early film projector, awed audiences in 1897. And from 1867 to 1871, John T. Ford — owner of a certain famous theater in Washington, D.C. — ran the show.

On display in the lobby is tangible evidence of Thalian Hall’s formidable legacy: the original drop curtain, painted by William Russell Smith, that hung onstage when the theater opened on October 12, 1858. The curtain might be the oldest of its kind in the United States. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

More recently, Thalian Hall has offered a home base to local troupes: Opera House Theatre Company, Thalian Association Community Theatre, Big Dawg Productions, and Pied Piper Theatre. It has hosted select screenings during the Cucalorus Film Festival, as well as one-person shows like Hal Holbrook’s performance as Mark Twain and comedian Cliff Cash’s forthcoming special. In addition to the Cinematique of Wilmington Film Series, featuring indie and art house films, it has screened Oscar nominees and concert films like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Fernando says that each of these performances, from the first to the most recent, has marked Wilmington as an arts-forward community and helped keep it that way.

“We — Thalian Hall and Wilmington — have an abiding passion for creativity and the development of new work and new artists,” Fernando says. To that end, Thalian Hall holds more than 700 events throughout the year, a robust schedule that reflects the demand of community creatives and theatergoers.

• • •

According to Fernando, each director has left the theater in better shape than when they found it, setting the stage for their successors to reach new creative heights. “But always retaining the character of the original structure,” he says. In the lobby hangs proof in the form of Thalian’s original stage curtain: a huge piece of hand-painted canvas, rescued from a 1973 fire by a volunteer and returned to the lobby years later. Fernando gazes at it with pride and awe, but it’s another bit of yesteryear stage effects that makes him glow.

In the attic, past the monstrous beam that’s been supporting the auditorium ceiling since 1858, Fernando descends a ladder-like set of stairs and stops at a pair of shallow troughs running along a backstage wall. “The Thunder Roll,” he says, balancing on the narrow steps and hefting a grapefruit-size cannonball in each hand. “One of two in the world. It’s an original, a piece of 19th-century special effects that we still use.” He loads four cannonballs into the trough and hands The Writer a rope. “Pull this when I tell you.”

He scurries to another rope, this one attached to a huge barrel hanging from the ceiling.

“Pull,” he says.

In the attic, Fernando conjures the sound of a thunderstorm the old-fashioned way: with cannonballs and a barrel of dried beans. Thalian Hall’s “Thunder Roll” — once common in 19th-century theaters — is one of only two remaining in the world. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

The Writer pulls, and a cannonball rolls slowly across the trough, rumbling as if peals of thunder were approaching Thalian Hall. Fernando waits a beat, then pulls his own rope, turning the barrel overhead, sending a load of dried beans tumbling inside the wooden vessel; it sounds like rain.

This is Thalian Hall: a through line, a direct connection to moments from the past, a whispered word from Thalia, a metal rod attracting the divine lightning of inspiration.

“Pull.” The Writer sends another cannonball, then another, then another, thundering through the trough. Fernando pulls his rope. The sound of a storm fills the auditorium.

Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts
310 Chestnut Street
Wilmington, NC 28401
(910) 632-2285
thalianhall.org