Rural town turns to crowdfunding site to raise money to re-open local theatre

Crowdfunding websites are becoming an increasingly popular form of raising money for projects and can be a valuable tool for rural towns to get the message out to a national audience. In the small southcentral Kentucky town of Horse Cave, organizers are trying to raise money to re-open Horse Cave Theatre, which closed in 2013 because of financial difficulties. (Copius Notes photo: Horse Cave Theatre)

Organizers are using a site called Indiegogo, where they hope to raise $75,000 to be used as the theatre's production budget, Alyssa Harvey reports for the Bowling Green Daily News.

"Mayor Randall Curry said bringing the theater back would have a positive impact on the community," Harvey writes. Curry told her, “Our young people would get to see plays, and sometimes it would be the only way they would be exposed [to the arts]. If we could bring the theater back, the theater’s identity to the local community would come back. When it was renamed [Kentucky Repertory Theatre], there were a lot of people who weren’t happy about losing our local identity." (Read more)