ARTS
VERO BEACH THEATRE GUILD
Vero Beach Theatre Guild moved from Riverside
Park to a former church building in 1985.
its old neighborhood near Dodgertown,
which had been the naval base where it
sometimes performed.
The guild has always been about dedicated
hours to prepare the new digs for the first
show of the 28th season, John Loves Mary.
Outreach programs were started along
with fundraising to turn the old church
into a proper theater. By 1993, it started
the season with a fresh face and Neil
Simon’s Rumors.
Now more than 60 years old, Vero Beach
Theatre Guild has recreated its space and its
vision. A three-story wing has been added
and the focus will be on exploring new, contemporary,
or an Apron Series reading monthly.
It wouldn’t be community theater without
recalls the time when she was dancing on a
16-foot-high bridge in Brigadoon and given
instructions by choreographer Chris Dale
Sexton to “shake it for the audience. ” The
reaction was not exactly what she expected,
making her think she’d had a costume
malfunction. At the reception after the
show, someone explained that a man in the
balcony was so intrigued by her dance that
he leaned over the railing and his dentures
fell out and hit a woman below.
Then there was the time an actress fell
onstage and split open her head. Her
husband, a doctor, jumped in to stitch
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volunteers and it took thousands of
and exciting works of the American
Theater and offering a fully staged show
a glitch or two. Donna Roberts Mitchell
The Vero Beach Community Theatre Trust raised the funds to build Riverside Theatre in the 1970s.
her up and the show went on, as it always
has and always will with the Vero Beach
Theatre Guild.
Ballet Vero Beach
In 2013, ballet instructors Adam Schnell
and Camilo Rodriguez realized their students
weren’t seeing the big picture.
“Our students never connected dance as
a career as something that might be possible
for them … because they didn’t see
any working professionals around them,”
Schnell said.
At that time, according to Schnell, there
was no professional dance organization
in the region and no professional ballet
company between Orlando and Miami.
“Ballet Vero Beach was founded because
I felt that Vero was missing a jewel in her
cultural crown,” he said.
From a one-event-per-season company
to a celebrated company with three
main-stage performances plus the new
Nutcracker on the Indian River, community
outreach performances and smaller special
events, Ballet Vero Beach’s operating
budget has quadrupled since the first pas
de deux.
Vero Classical Ballet
Barry and Amy Trammell’s Vero Classical
Ballet is staging its 11th performance of
the traditional Nutcracker in November,
with students joining several professionals,
including the Trammells. The school’s
City of Vero Beach 1919-2019 VeroBeach100.org
RIVERSIDE THEATRE
repertoire includes favorites Swan Lake,
Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
Vero Classical Ballet, founded in 2005
as a school for aspiring professional
dancers, is a performing and teaching
company. Classes are held at Leisure Square
and it accepts students beginning at the
age of 3. Amy teaches a class for special
needs students, Ballet Magnifique, and
welcomes those students into the cast of
The Nutcracker.
MUSIC THEN AND NOW
Vero Beach Choral Society
One of the mainstays of choral music
in Vero Beach for 35 years has been the
Vero Beach Choral Society, an auditionbased
community chorus that sometimes
requires members to have a passport. The
season’s schedule has it at Community
Church of Vero Beach but invitations from
abroad have taken members across the
Atlantic to Estonia, Vienna and the 10th
International Church Music Festival in
Coventry, England. After that concert, the
singers toured England and Scotland for
two weeks. They’ve been invited to Carnegie
Hall twice.
Ray Adams, founding director of the
Visual and Performing Arts component
of the curriculum at Indian River Charter
High School, founded the society when he
accepted his first professional position in
Vero Beach in 1983 as director of music at
Community Church. >>
VERO BEACH THEATRE GUILD
The guild’s new building gave the company a muchneeded
three-story storage and rehearsal space.
/VeroBeach100.org