Stage One - A Shining Light to Follow

 

For 28 years, Lansing’s Peppermint Creek Theatre Company has lived a vagabond existence.

They have moved from one theater to the next always looking for the best place to produce their shows. They have moved from art galleries to floral conservatories to churches to community rooms.

But despite the challenge of adjusting to a new venue so often, founder and artistic director Chad Swan-Badgero always managed to produce challenging plays of impressive quality. Using amateur actors, they produced superb performances of dramas such as “God of Carnage”, “Other Desert Cities”, “Venus in Fur”, “Indecent” and musicals such as “Assassins,”, “Next to Normal”, “In the Heights” and “Parade”.

In the summer of 2022 something magical happened. Tom Arthur, Pastor of Sycamore Creek Church, with facilities in south Lansing and Potterville and ardent theater lover, approached Swan-Badgero after a production he attended about an unusual idea.

He had recently acquired a spacious church building on Lake Lansing Road with lovely grounds, space galore and a central location.  Arthur looked at the facility and wondered how the space could serve the community in addition to being a place of worship.

Upon further reflection, he felt that the arts could be the centerpiece of his vision of bringing in a diverse group of people to the church. To that end he approached Swan-Badgero to see if Peppermint Creek would like to share the sanctuary with the church for their productions.

After all, the 150-seat sanctuary is only used on Sunday mornings and sits there empty the other six days of the week.  Swan-Badgero said “sure” to Arthur, never thinking that it would actually come to pass.

Arthur also approached Jeff Coff and his Ixion Ensemble Theater and Anna Maria Pasley-Horn, director of Hope Central Urban Arts to join the them who will also be sharing the space.

The church is located at 2200 Lake Lansing Rd., across from Eastwood Town Center.

In the year that followed Arthur’s momentous conversation with Swan-Badgero, the 1968-era church was transformed.  Big airy windows were added to the cafe area, bright colors cover most of the walls, the HVAC was modernized, a new sound system was installed, and the sanctuary was totally changed to include new lighting, chairs, a backstage stairwell for actors to access their dressing rooms and more.  The Peppermint Creek people will add stage lighting and just raised money to install new risers.

And suddenly we were all gathered on September 28 at the newly refurbished facility for a grand ribbon cutting ceremony.  Lansing mayor Andy Schor was there, The Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce sent representatives, as well as community and arts leaders all celebrated the newly named Stage One.

Performing arts centers are expensive and difficult projects to bring to reality. Just ask the City of Lansing, which has been working on a new performing arts center for over ten years.  They finally broke ground on a trimmed down facility, but so far the construction work has not yet begun.

But in this case, a dynamic and positive pastor together with successful theater companies displayed how a community can come together to create a new and attractive art center quickly and inexpensively.

Tom Arthur, Chad Swan-Badgero, Jeff Croff, Anna Maria Pasley-Horn 

There were space needs for small arts organizations and forward-thinking people to make it happen, creating a new arts, community and worship center in one facility.

A big bravo for Pastor Tom Arthur and his team for showing us all what a community can do to make Lansing a better place to live.   

Stage One Performing Arts Center is a shining light to guide us to appreciate how cooperation and collaboration can produce astounding results.