Doug Love is the new director of the Ashland Theatre. (Photo by Clinton Brandhagen)
As a youth, Doug Love, the new president and CEO of the resurgent Ashland Theatre, was the youngest performer in the Milwaukee Players troupe that produced shows in the opulent 1,300-seat Pabst Theatre. He soon realized that the power position in the business of show wasn’t the actor, director or even the writer. He wanted to grow up to be ... a producer.
Barely in high school, he saved money from odd jobs to stage “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.” In that show, he recalls with a laugh, “I produced, directed and played Linus.”
Making a connection between entertainment and education stemmed from his roles as a boy in plays such as “Camelot.” “I wanted to know more about the story of King Arthur and Medieval England,” he says. He didn’t enjoy school in the usual way. He made up songs to remember details. This put him on to a concept that made his career: a new approach to teaching core academic subjects.
“What I’ve tried to do, through various work, is essentially teach and say something,” he says. “so the audience leaves the theater somewhat edified."
Love’s energy and vision has taken him throughout the country in various artistic capacities, and he’s created educational and entertainment programs for school-age kids and their families through film, television and digital media. He’s lived in New York City and San Francisco, among other places in between. His arrival in Ashland comes at a time when he wants to invest his talents into a community and stay put for a while.
Love also produced national touring shows including Marlo Thomas’ “Free to Be You and Me,” which came to Richmond’s Carpenter Theatre around 1990. The production was also a 1974 television special.
“What a marvelous theater,” he recalls of the Carpenter, built as a Loew's movie palace. “So that was my first taste of Richmond.”
“The restaurant scene you have now was just forming. Richmond was always really attractive to me. I love history, this part of the country, and this incredible new idea that’s happening in Ashland. I’m excited to bring my experience and creativity to this theater and community.”
During the summers while still in his 20s, he started producing traveling shows including a Kabuki-style play, inspired by “The Mikado.” He cast four actors out of Chicago and for three years, toured cities in the South. “I was tired of winter,” he says of Milwaukee. He rented Broadway roadhouses and presented daytime matinees for schoolchildren. The tickets were pre-sold and an audience awaited. The minimal setting was FedEx’ed ahead from town to town. He remembers, “We’d pile on a plane with our dirty white tights under kimonos and the stage manager had to do our laundry when we got off the plane.”
Kabuki, Love says, was the “Saturday Night Live” of its day, satirizing the foibles of the powerful, and he paired that style to the “Emperor’s New Clothes,” in an East-meets-West mashup. The production ultimately served as the springboard that sent him to wide and varied places. One of them was Boulder, Colorado, where he worked with Walden Media, one of the many entertainment outlets owned by Boulder-based tycoon Philip Anschutz (his holdings include Regal and United Artists theaters). There, Love oversaw the overhaul of a cinema into the Walden Family Theatre, which provided an experience that will serve Love well in the fitting out of the Ashland Theatre.
At the Walden, Love developed stage plays for youth. These included an adaptation of a young adult novel "Holes" by Louis Sachar, and a rock opera version of “The Odyssey.”
In San Francisco, a partnership with the mayor’s office, the county schools and library system culminated a literacy program in which 65,000 middle schooler read “Holes” at the same time. For the past eight years, every fifth grader in the Miami-Dade County school system has, through free admission, seen “The Odyssey” production.
Love created the World Book Encyclopedia’s Dramatic Learning System, with 11 million paid subscribers in 23 countres, produced Disney’s award-wnning daytime television series, “Out of the Box,” and HBO’s animated “Jammin’ Animals," which paired animal stories of different cultures with songs and nature series-type visuals. He’s authored 30 titles for HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and others.
The "Out of the Box" intro:
"Why Bears Have Short Tails" on "Jammin' Animals"
Love's vision for Ashland is, basically, the sky's the limit. The building itself is going through a complete renovation – its impressive Art Deco Moderne exterior will be matched by the interior décor – making it look snazzier than ever. The Roller-Bottimore Foundation is a benefactor for the restoration of the theater’s emblematic marquee. Ashland owns the building and is leasing the space to the foundation for a dollar a year.
The Ashland Theatre Foundation was recently awarded a $150,000 matching grant from The Cabell Foundation to further fund the construction. Renovations after years of dormancy were first made possible by a $500,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, matched by $500,000 from the Town of Ashland. Love will be in charge of an additional $1.5 million to include sound systems for live productions and movies, in addition to projection equipment and new seats.
(photo courtesy the Ashland Theater Committee)
Love also sees the theater as a musical venue. “For that kind of in-between group that’s touring, for someone who wants to have that intimate experience with an audience, I’m hoping to attract some people you wouldn’t expect.” Love sees the Ashland Theatre as a busy hive of entertainment that’ll likely necessitate expansion — and there’s room nearby. He’s planning collaborations with Randolph-Macon College. Love also wants to connect with the Fathom Events, a company that packages classic movies and performances of the Metropolitan Opera and the National Theatre. “With technology, we can show a great film, and Skype in someone involved with it, or have a panel discussion afterward,” he says.
To make all this happen, he’s on the verge of hiring an assistant and an operations second-in-charge. When the theater opens in time for the fall arts season, Love expects the theater to employ eight to10 people.
So Love has come to the “Center of the Universe” (Ashland's modest moniker) to make his own Big Bang — to create a galaxy of entertainment for not just Ashland, but the entire region.
