How many people does it take to run the Niswonger Performing Arts Center?\u00a0Answer: 150 front of house volunteers, at least 10 regular stage crew volunteers, 50 committee members, three cleaning crew, 10 safety\/security crew, several box office helpers, nine board members, six staff members, and an executive director: everything but a partridge in a pear tree!\u00a0\u00a0If I count correctly, that\u2019s just about 250 people.<\/p>\n
How do you begin to say thank you to all those people?\u00a0I guess you write about them in the news and say thank you as often as you see them.\u00a0I am sure there are times the jobs seem a bit thankless, but hopefully, most of the time is rewarding.\u00a0There is one thing that is for sure: we are truly blessed to have so many people willing to be a part of our operation at the Niswonger.<\/p>\n
One group that gets little recognition (well, there are many, but I will mention one right now) is our Visual Arts Committee.\u00a0Over the years, we have had numerous talented and gifted individuals serve as part of this committee.\u00a0Currently, Linda Mechling is our committee chairperson and she has her crew of a few who decorate our lobbies and outdoors of the Niswonger.\u00a0It is especially challenging, but beautiful at Christmastime.\u00a0We have heard so many compliments on the appearance and it is due to this committee.\u00a0Thank you, Linda and crew, for all your dedicated work.\u00a0Some of these are the same who decorate the Brumback Library, churches, and numerous other community gathering areas.<\/p>\n
Inside the music hall, our tech director\u2019s wife, Kandi Saunier, helps create beautiful staging and decorations, as well as keeping the many volunteer staff well fed and happy.\u00a0Thank you, Kandi!\u00a0During big stage productions, this crew of volunteers will spend 16-20 continuous hours at the PAC.\u00a0This is well beyond the call of duty and they can\u2019t be thanked enough.<\/p>\n
This highlights just a few of our many volunteers. There are so many who regularly dedicate their time.\u00a0\u00a0They are not only Niswonger volunteers, but great ambassadors for the community of Van Wert.\u00a0This Christmas season, we had six professional performances.\u00a0Nearly 6,500 people attended these performances and, based on the reports of our ushers, the majority came from all over.\u00a0Ask the restaurant owners in town if we were busy!<\/p>\n
Our ushers and greeters are wonderful ambassadors and seemingly love to greet and welcome people to our community and our performing arts center.\u00a0We constantly hear from people how welcome they feel at the Niswonger.\u00a0One would think how we treat people is how everyone would treat people.\u00a0Unfortunately, that doesn\u2019t seem to be true.<\/p>\n
From the performer side, we hear the same thing.\u00a0I just finished a phone call with the agent for The Texas Tenors and he was telling me how much the guys enjoyed our venue and hope to be back.\u00a0Now, I always say that most performers like to perform at places that pay them, but it really does seem to be true that they feel the Niswonger is a very special place.\u00a0The crew and management of Rudolph, the Musical<\/em> wrote in their report that they wanted their agency to book them at the Niswonger again.\u00a0It was the only such request on the tour, I was told.<\/p>\n People of Van Wert really do know how to treat people well.\u00a0We are so blessed to have caring and hospitable people who are willing to donate their time.\u00a0I will never take that for granted.\u00a0And at this Christmas season, it is a perfect time to say thank you to all those who call the Niswonger Performing Arts Center their home for volunteering and choice for entertainment.<\/p>\n Merry Christmas to all of you and a very Happy New Year!\u00a0\u00a0We look forward to seeing you next year.<\/p>\n FIN\u00c9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How many people does it take to run the Niswonger Performing Arts Center?\u00a0Answer: 150 front of house volunteers, at least 10 regular stage crew volunteers, 50 committee members, three cleaning crew, 10 safety\/security crew, several box office helpers, nine board members, six staff members, and an executive director: everything but a partridge in a pear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-01 06:57:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}