Arts

In a “how-it-all-began” story straight out of a Rooney-Garland musical—“Say, gang, wouldn’t it be swell to start a theater company!?”—Theatre IV was born on the road with a production of Br’er Rabbit. It premiered in the Halifax High School gymnasium. “We had six people in that cast, jammed in that little van,” says Whiteway. The school paid about $150 for the show.

As it turned out, a production company that fit in a van was a good model for schools. Here was a small troupe that could arrive on time, perform and depart in under two hours, and stage itself in just about any kind of venue—the gym, the cafeteria—and still bring live professional theater to the students. “We said, ‘Give us a place, give us some electricity, and we can bring this program into your school,’” says Whiteway. “And the schools, once they had us, they wanted us to keep coming back.”

Nearly 35 years later, with Miller and Whiteway still serving, respectively, as artistic and managing directors, Theatre IV is an acclaimed Richmond cultural institution—winner of multiple accolades and awards—and housed in the historic and beautifully restored Empire Theatre on Broad Street, where it has helped to turn a blighted area into an arts destination. From its minimalist origins, the operation has grown into a polished professional theater company, enjoying annual revenues of more than $3 million for the past decade, employing hundreds of actors—recruited by national casting calls—and staging lavish productions at the Empire of family favorites such as The Wizard of Oz, Annie, Beauty and the Beast and The Sound of Music. Over the years, Theatre IV has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian and the Pentagon, and it holds an annual residency in New York. Miller and Whiteway attribute such a long record of growth and success to careful governorship by the nonprofit’s board and to a mission that focuses not only on the arts but equally as well on education, children’s health and community leadership. “We wanted to be the theater the community needed us to be,” says Miller.