OREM — A curtain has risen from the dust to resume its position on center stage at the SCERA more than 60 years after its debut.
The resurgence of the red velvet drape is so popular among volunteers and employees at SCERA that they often refer to the curtain by its nickname, "The Grand."
Theater patrons have welcomed its return, even sensing something familiar about the old decoration.
"I was thrilled when they announced that that was the curtain," said Cumarah Haldaway, a SCERA donor who has attended the theater since its construction in 1941. "I thought I recognized it, but when they said that was really it, I just felt a thrill."
Donated to the theater in 1941 by a Chicago opera house, the curtain hung in the SCERA's Playhouse One Theater, opening and closing on countless community-watched plays until the early 1960s.
When the theater was remodeled to add a movie screen — one of the biggest in the state — there was no room for the curtains. They were left hanging dormant in the curtain well.
In 1981, The Grand resurfaced during another remodel, and it was displayed until the mid-1990s when, because of a lack of a pulley system, the curtains again went unused.
Eventually, the curtain was taken down, folded up and stored in a dark corner of the empty stage behind the movie screen.
Though employees always knew the giant red curtain was hiding in the shadows of Playhouse One, no one knew what to do with it until a pulley system was installed in Playhouse Two, and the curtain was resurrected.
"It stayed pretty clean because it was folded into itself," said Keith Weakley, a maintenance manager at the SCERA. "The back was the only part that was exposed."
With a little vacuum cleaning, lint brushing and a lot of help lifting the heavy drape, The Grand is just as grand as it was when first hung above the stage.
There's just one little change, however.
The curtain was too long to hang on the stage, so three feet were trimmed from the bottom of the roughly 27-foot-tall drape. The extra velvet was just enough fabric to make into a tease for the top of the curtain.
It has now been in use for more than a month.
"It makes it feel much more like a Victorian theater," Weakley said. "It adds the feel of a Broadway show. It really brings you into the mood and the feel of what genre the play is trying to create."
Traditionally, curtains are often used to frame the stage and hide the scenery until the right moment. In that sense, the theater tries to create an atmosphere of watching life through a window, and the scenery is very important.
"The thing is, the curtain has to hide something," said Eric Samuelson, professor of theater and media arts at Brigham Young University. "And it has to hide something that's pretty cool so that when you open it you're kind of dazzled."
As theaters continues to change and evolve, some say the curtain is not as necessary, even a hindrance. This change is one reason curtains are no longer a universal accessory in all theaters.
"More and more theater is finding other values," Samuelson said. " And more and more there are audiences on three sides of the stage and you can configure the actors and audiences however you want. For those kinds of shows, you can't have a curtain."
But audiences can also see curtains as more than a nice decoration. To some, it represents the essence of an era that is long gone.
"To bring (the curtain) back is like re-awakening the feelings of what SCERA meant," Haldaway said. "It's always been good for family values. It's always been family oriented, always a part of Orem. It was the center of everything. I know the new generation couldn't possibly have those same kind of feelings. . . . but to us that have lived here it means more than it does to the new generation. Or even our children."
E-mail: achoate@desnews.com