Here's a link to a story about my theatre in the paper today. It's pretty sweet.

If it tells you you need to log in, it's no big deal. But for those of you who'd rather not, below is the text of the story:

Monday, October 29, 2007

By Carl Hoover

Tribune-Herald entertainment editor

Slightly more than two years after a communitywide drive to keep the Waco Hippodrome Theatre alive, the performing arts venue has broken its season ticket record.

Waco Performing Arts Company Executive Director Scott Baker said the theater sold season ticket No. 582 on Thursday, topping the facility’s nine-year record of 580.

“It’s gratifying how far the organization has come in a few short years,” he said, attributing the surge in season tickets to hard work by staff, more contemporary programming and expanded marketing.

Baker came to the Hippodrome in the summer of 2005, weeks after a budget shortfall threatened to close down the venue. The theater sold 220 season tickets to an abbreviated season that year and 331 the next.

Baker said the addition of such recent Broadway hit musicals as “Rent,” “The Producers,” “Hairspray” and “Chicago” to the Hippodrome season had drawn new ticket buyers, particularly young adults. Though experiments such as contemporary Christian music concerts failed to draw audiences, others such as online ticketing and marketing, electronic newsletters and stand-up comedy by the likes of Carlos Mencia, Gallagher and Rickey Smiley broadened the Hippodrome’s customer base.

The record number of season tickets means downstairs seating for the theater’s regular season shows is sold out. Baker said there’s a waiting list for persons wanting to buy season tickets on the theater’s main floor.

“The message I take from this is that everybody sees our future now,” he said.