Golden Triangle Theatre finds new home at old church
COLUMBUS, Miss. (AP) — The Golden Triangle Theatre has found a new home in a familiar place, the former First Baptist Church building in downtown Columbus.
The massive structure, built in 1908, had been on the market since 2005 before Vince Rapisarda purchased it earlier this year. He was soon approached by the organization about potentially using part of the space.
“(The Golden Triangle Theatre) approached me a while back about what they do and the fact that there is no theater in Columbus, and they knew I had the sanctuary as well as all kinds of office space and classroom space,” Rapisarda said. “I was pretty excited when they first approached me.”
The Golden Triangle Theatre, while a relatively new group, is a nonprofit formed with the goal of supporting and growing the arts in Columbus. However, it was transient in the early days, which made it difficult to really sink its teeth in at first.
“The theatre is really completing its first year of existence, we formed back in June of last year, and we were working, primarily, in a few locations,” said Garrett Torbert, executive and artistic director of the organization. “We started out at Annunciation Catholic Church, in their activity center, and then we ended up, this past spring, at the Columbus Arts Council, and we kind of created a little partnership with them.”
The theatre offers lots of programs for adults and kids in the community with the goal of promoting the arts and encouraging creativity, but the problems really came when it began to rapidly grow.
“We had such a large enrollment in the spring versus the fall where we had about 15, and in the spring we had about 57, so it was a huge increase,” Torbert said. “This summer, we worked on deciding our next goal and how we wanted to continue to establish...