Welcome Home to Legacy.
Welcome Home!
We have missed you, Legacy Friends and Family.
After a four-year intermission, Legacy is back, and we cannot wait to bring love, joy, rest, healing, and a beautiful experience to our community once again.
So where have we been?
Let's start from the beginning, shall we?
ACT ONE
In the summer of 2011, I started Legacy Theater Company's "Act One" when a small group of friends wrote and performed an improv play called The Higgins' Train to Georgia. This play launched Legacy and brought together so many beautiful people in our community over the seven years that Act One ran. (Click here to see an archive of productions from ACT 1)
Act One continued from 2011-2012 as we searched for our "setting" in Jacksonville, N.C. First, we rented out a church, then a fellowship hall on Henderson Drive, then a warehouse-style building on Doris Avenue. We performed five mainstage productions in those years, and we introduced the young people in our community to our School of the Arts program, where they performed three plays and one musical!
Our first home on 2442 Onslow Drive.
Many of you followed us from the church to the fellowship hall, the warehouse, and finally, Onslow Drive. We settled into our first home, a 100 seat black-box style theater at 2442 Onslow Drive, Jacksonville, NC. We have lovely memories from the four years we resided on Onslow Drive. (Click here for a history of our time at 2442 Onslow Drive.)
INTERMISSION
Every actor and every audience needs an intermission. For the audience, an intermission builds anticipation for acts to follow. For the actors, it is a time to change costumes, refresh lines, get into the proper headspace, and most importantly . . . rest for the acts to come.
In December 2017, Legacy dimmed the lights on our Act One. This was an incredibly difficult decision for my husband Steven and me. We were doing so well, filling our audiences with amazing patrons and friends and our stage with talented volunteers who became family. So why would we dim the lights and close the doors?
To start, in October of 2017, my father unexpectedly passed away from a massive stroke. We found out that he was rushed to the hospital during a School of the Arts Whose Line Improv production. After the show, Steven and I ran out of the theater and headed to the hospital to sit by my father. Two days later, he passed away.
My father's unexpected death was just the start, Friends. Only the Lord knew what was to come when we decided to close our theater at 2442 Onslow Drive after months of prayer.
In January 2019, my mom and I got a phone call from a gym in Rock Hill, South Carolina. I was told that my brother, Ian, had passed away while working out at the gym. If you were a part of Legacy's Act One, you definitely know Ian. He was a bright light . . . still is . . . on Legacy's stage. If you heard him play the saxophone in one of our productions, you were blessed enough to hear a bit of music from heaven. Ian had an aortic aneurysm and passed away at the age of thirty-eight.
Ian performing in Rock Around The Clock.
In April 2019, I was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery and therapy to heal and recover. In November of the same year, I was rushed to the emergency room and underwent surgery to remove a tumor. My husband Steven had an emergency appendicitis in August of 2020 and another surgery this past December of 2021.
It has been a crazy intermission, Friends, and my family and I have needed time to grieve and heal, seek the Lord with all of our hearts, and discover His purpose and plan for the future.
And this is just our story.
2020.
Need we say more?
We have all been through the wringer and we all have a story.
We have all overcome and have been overcoming.
We have all needed to grieve and heal from the losses we've experienced over the past few years.
And Friends, we all need a little bit of love, joy, and rest.
We all need to sparkle again.
We all need to experience REVIVAL . . . Renewal . . . Rebirth!
ACT TWO
In Act One, Legacy's mission was to enrich, educate, and enhance our community through an excellent theatrical experience. We have all, by the grace of God, survived intermission. We may be bruised, bitter, and battered, but we believe that there is a ray of hope on the horizon.
In Act Two, our mission has deepened. The mission of Legacy as we open Act Two is to bring love, joy, healing, and rest to our audiences, volunteers, and community. It is to share the love of Jesus with our community as we use our gifts to better the lives of others.
Our mission is to make everyone who steps into our ministry feel loved, wanted, treasured, and cherished.
Our mission is to bring healing through community to those who are broken-hearted, to those walking through depression and anxiety or have lost so much, and just need to know that it will all be alright.
Our mission is to bring joy to our audiences, volunteers, and community. Happiness is dependent on happenings. As soon as the situation changes, happiness usually goes out the window. But JOY is that deep contentment that there is still joy to be found even when things are spinning out of control.
Our mission is to bring our community rest and a place to revive their weary souls.
Our mission is to use the arts and art therapy to help our military community cope with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and the pain that often comes with fighting for freedom.
Our mission is to bring a joy, rest, belonging, and acceptance to the youth of our community.
Legacy may not be like any non-profit you've visited or volunteered at. It is a place where our focus on excellence in music and art is mingled with what the Bible says in Isaiah 61:3. It is a place where you will be given "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness . . . ".
Welcome back, Family and Friends, to Legacy.
Act Two is about to begin.
Will you join us?
💜 Erika Bain
Founder and Artistic Director @ Legacy.
How has “intermission” been treating you, Friends?
How have you been?
We’d love to hear in the comments.
