This was a letter that was published in Harlingen's Valley Morning Star in August of 2008. Thankfully HPAT has been able to recover somewhat from the damages of Dolly, although rebuilding means so much more than just repairing a building. We have had many challenges even after re-opening, but are looking ahead to doing great things at HPAT!

DAMAGE DUE TO HURRICANE DOLLY

The Harlingen community has supported Harlingen Performing Arts Theatre for ten years now. We appreciate your support of your community theatre. This fall, as you may have heard, we will not be able to open our season on schedule. The HPAT Board of Directors wanted to contact our members, our audience, our advertisers and our supporters, and explain the situation.

During Hurricane Dolly, the theatre sustained roof damage and will need fairly extensive repairs to make it safe for use once again. We are covered by insurance, but our season is going to be delayed while repairs are being done. Right now we are in limbo, waiting for the insurance adjusters to finish their work before we can hire contractors to do the necessary reconstruction. Even when the repairs are completed, it will be as much as six more weeks before we can perform a show at HPAT because it takes that long to audition, rehearse, and prepare a set.

But we also want everyone to know that THE SHOW MUST GO ON ! For years before we ever had a theatre building, our community theatre in Harlingen performed in whatever space was available: a one-room school house, a middle school auditorium, the fellowship hall in an RV park. If need be, we can do that sort of thing again. We are already looking for alternative venues so that if the repairs take too long, we can still offer some performances. At the moment we don’t know what shows we will be able to do, when, or where. But we will have shows again, and we will let everyone know where to find us.

We had a great season in 2007-2008. 15,797 people came through our doors. They included local residents, people from other parts of the Valley, and many loyal Winter Texan friends. We’ve had more compliments on our shows than ever before. Our production of Jekyll and Hyde was compared to a Broadway production, and our last performance of the season, Seussical, was a great success with sold out crowds in four of the six performances. Our summer workshop was again a huge success with 73 children participating. We gave summer jobs to high school and college students who were helping with the workshop. In addition, we rented the theatre to be used for dance recitals, voice recitals, jazz bands, financial meetings, the Birding Festival, and even a marriage counseling seminar held by a local church.

Now we need your support more than ever. The wonderful thing about community theatre is that it truly involves the community: as directors, as performers, as technical crew, as audience, and as sponsors. If you have been a part of HPAT in the past, if you have enjoyed productions in our theatre on Fair Park Boulevard, if your children or grandchildren have taken part in our theatre workshops, please support us now with your tax-deductible contributions and later by attending our shows, offsite or at the reopened HPAT. We need you and we will do our best to keep giving you professional-quality entertainment from and in your very own community.

Please help us meet this goal.

The Board of Directors
Harlingen Performing Arts Theatre
August 23, 2008