P.O. Box 691 Sebring Florida USA 33871 Tel: 863-382-2525
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P.O. Box 691 Sebring Florida USA 33871 Tel: 863-382-2525 |
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Emmie Hayes - A Lady Who Is The Ticket By: Roy Riedy |
March, 1988 was a big month in the history of Highlands Little Theatre. The musical Carousel was the first play to be presented on the theater's newly constructed stage, and Emmie Hayes' name appears for the first time in the Carousel program's Box Office section. Since that time, with only two exceptions, Emmie's name has appeared in that section in every play program to this date, a total of seventy-three plays. Like Helen Hayes who was called Broadway's First Lady of the Theater, Emmie Hayes could be called, with no theatrical stretch of the imagination, Highlands Little Theatre's First Lady of the Lobby, a title she certainly has earned and deserves.
The theater and the Box Office have both made many improvements since that March in 1988 when Emmie made her first appearance. Ticketing has become computerized, the Box Office has been modernized, and shows are selling out, a mixed blessing for Ms. Hayes and her staff who have the delicate job of keeping ticketless patrons happy.
The value of her work did not take long to be recognized for the year following her joining HLT, at the Fourth Annual Zenon Presentations in 1989, Emmie received her first Zenon, a Board Service Award for her steady and outstanding work.
The smell of the greasepaint has only been strong enough four times to lure Emmie out of her Box Office since she has joined HLT. In November of 1989, her name appeared as a singer and dancer in the Meridith Willson musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown; in August of 1992 she was one of the villagers of Tobiki in The Teahouse of the August Moon; in August of 1994 she was back in America as a member of the chorus and dancers in Meet Me In St. Louis, and most recently, in June of 1998, if you looked closely you would have found her disguised as a miner in the Lerner and Loewe musical Paint Your Wagon.
A year later in October of 1999, Emmie was again on stage, this time not in a play but at the Annual Zenon Awards Ceremonies, where she became the fourteenth deserving recipient of the Janelou Buck Significant Achievement Award for her dozen years of loyal and cheerfully rendered assistance that she has so abundantly provided for the Box Office of Highlands Little Theatre.
Like so many of the other winners of the Significant Achievement Award, Emmie Hayes has concentrated her time and energy on one phase of the many facets that go into making our theater a success. Like her co-workers and co-winners, in doing so she has perfected her operation into a smooth running and productive department that has benefitted and supported the theater's entire fabric. It is not a coincidence that our playhouse has taken on a professional sheen that is commented on by so many of our patrons, for that patina has been supplied by the squad of serious, dedicated, and self-made professionals that have created the atmosphere for that glow to shine.
Congratulations and thanks Emmie for your years of loyal service. You and the other winners of the Significant Achievement Award have made a great and lasting contribution to the running and presence of Highlands Little Theatre and the award that you have won is well named, for your work has certainly been a Significant Achievement.
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