The Mayo Center for the Performing Arts at the Community Theatre is getting a trim.
Starting Tuesday, the Morristown facility is going to be called the Mayo Performing Arts Center, or MPAC.
The concert hall still will be called the Community Theatre. The new tagline: “Morristown’s Community Theatre since 1937.”
The name transition was three years in the making.
“We feel as though this name reflects what we have evolved into – a fully formed performing arts center that not only brings the world’s greatest entertainers to Morristown, but also has a robust performing arts program, an extensive education program for children and adults, partner programs with local school districts, a visual arts gallery, and outreach into the community,” MPAC Marketing Director Katie Lemery said in a statement. ” We fully embrace all of our new capabilities and exciting new opportunities that will come in the future.
The Mayo name refers to A. Dale “Bud” Mayo, former chairman of the board and a patron of the theater. The founder of Clearview Cinemas and retired CEO of the Morristown-based Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp. donated $1 million to a capital improvement campaign that helped transform the venue–on the brink of ruin in the early 1990s–into a showcase where Tony Bennett, Liza Minelli and Itzhak Perlman have performed.
Here is the new logo:
Comments to date are spot on. Consider another tragedy to the amendment – poor choices made by leaders and business owners are giving our beloved Morristown a bad name, in which the struggling theater is simply disassociating itself with.
The new name reflects a big donor (not so unusual in the old USA) and the fact that it is now more than a community theatre.
People do easily forget, so you might think of it as Morristown’s Performing Arts Center – MPAC.
That name is ego run amuck. People quickly forget. Don Smith saved that theater along with scores of other people. To put one persons name on it is an absolute travesty. The Community Theatre was and will always be a community project.
Still wish they’d just use “The Community Theatre”. That name has such a rich history, and says so much about the theatre’s role in our community.