Chester’s new Baxter Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education (Photo by Virginia Hamrick)
When Marly Fuller was growing up in Chester, she took advantage of as many arts activities as her family could afford, playing the cello and participating in arts camps and theater clubs. Now, years later, she is executive director of Chester’s new Baxter Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education, providing opportunities for her hometown community to expand its engagement with the arts as both spectators and participants.
“I see the center becoming the heartbeat of the arts in Chesterfield,” she says. “My vision is that the center transforms the community.”
With its 350-seat theater, multipurpose education center, classroom and art gallery, the 11810 Centre St. facility provides multiple spaces for visitors to experience the arts in many forms.
Fuller, who worked previously as a nonprofit consultant, wants the center to be welcoming to everyone, regardless of their experience with the arts. “There are some art centers I’ve been to where if you don’t get it, you feel left out,” Fuller says. “I never want to create that feeling.”
The center provides much-needed performance space for partners such as Broken Leg Theater (BLT), a volunteer-run organization that offers opportunities for local families to perform in musicals and plays at a limited cost. In the past, BLT staged shows at local schools, packing and unpacking sets and costumes for each performance. “Residing at the center will open up so many doors for us and enable us to provide more educationally rich opportunities for our participants,” says the group’s director of education outreach, Megan Livingston.
Students from the Specialty Center for the Arts at Thomas Dale High School at work in a classroom at the center (Photo by Virginia Hamrick)
In addition to hosting local performers, the center plans to attract touring companies such as Hiplet, a Chicago-based group that blends ballet and hip-hop. Ideally, visiting artists will spend a one-week residence at the center, allowing them to reflect and create in a different environment, while sharing some of what they’ve learned with residents.
“The center provides a gateway for the rest of the arts community in the world,” Fuller says.
For local artists, the center also provides another space in the region for them to connect with audiences.
“Having this space to perform in is like having somebody give you a piece of their lottery win,” says singer Desirée Roots, who will perform in the center’s virtual concert series Feb. 12. Roots describes the center’s 350-seat Jimmy Dean Theater as “breathtaking.”
Sound and lighting engineers in the center’s Jimmy Dean Theater get ready for the Dominion Energy@Home virtual concert series. (Photo by Clem Britt)
The center’s origin dates back to the 1960s, when Dottie Armstrong, who founded a local community theater group called the John Rolfe Players with her husband, Larry, proposed the idea of a performing arts center. At the time, the group traveled to churches and schools to perform, and its members dreamed of a permanent home. The group disbanded in 1995, but the idea of a performing arts center remained. Decades later, the first chairman of the Chesterfield Center for the Arts at Chester Foundation (now the Chesterfield Cultural Arts Foundation), the late Betty Matthews, worked to cultivate the idea. After the 2008 recession halted fundraising, Hugh Cline, current chairman of the CCAF, which manages the Baxter Perkinson Center, helped raise enough money to convince county officials the center was viable. Then, a few years ago, Dr. Baxter Perkinson, an artist and philanthropist who also founded Virginia Family Dentistry, donated $1 million for naming rights and funding an art gallery.
Former Atlanta Falcons running back Ken Oxendine, who grew up in Chester, serves on the CCAF Board. He remembers field trips to Thomas Dale High School, where he watched their orchestra perform, as part of his limited exposure to the arts. “The only artwork I saw was what students in my school created,” he says. Oxendine, who works as a motivational speaker, is thrilled that his daughters will experience the arts in their hometown. “We don’t have to trek to downtown Richmond anymore to see high-quality performances,” he says.
While the pandemic dampened plans for in-person performances, Fuller puts a positive spin on current circumstances. “The pandemic has given us time to be very strategic so that our guest experience will be top-notch when we open our doors,” she says.
Recently, the center has partnered with local groups who can livestream their events, while also offering virtual classes, which were in the works before COVID-19 restrictions began. In sharing the arts with the community — either virtually or in person, Fuller hopes the center will enable visitors to immerse themselves in the arts.
“We are stewards of a guest experience that makes people feel a connection to the artists, to the center, to the community, but most importantly to themselves,” she says.
