Page 4 - Hawaii Island MidWeek - Sep 14, 2022

4 HAWAI‘I ISLAND MIDWEEK SEPTEMBER 14, 2022
How do you celebrate 10 decades of excellence at Hawai‘i Theatre Center? Well, if you’re president and CEO Gregory Dunn, you do so by guaranteeing yet another year of blockbuster acts and events.
the notable favorite high-en- ergy Chinatown Chase. So, when the opportunity came about to lead Hawai‘i The- atre, well, there’s no business like show business. His back- ground with the Better Busi- ness Bureau equipped him to lead the nonprofit through an earned income strategy to make the organization more
Hawai‘i Theatre Cen- ter president and CEO Gregory Dunn knows firsthand how easy it is to get lost in the grandeur of the 100-year-old auditorium.
place,” he recalls.
In the years since that per-
(Above left and right) Hawai‘i Theatre has been entertaining guests for 100 years from its historic Chinatown building. PHOTOS COURTESY HAWAI‘I THEATRE
with the shifting tides of stay-at-home streaming and the desire to fly the coop to faraway destinations once restrictions were lifted. The answer, according to Dunn, was simple: offer a wider va-
“I remember perform- ing at one of the first Jim Nabors Christmas specials at the theater, standing on stage looking at this grand
formance, Dunn found him- self back at Hawai‘i Theatre again and again, but this time, as a spectator. He remembers attending numerous shows and participating in fundrais- ing efforts like the Sarah Mc- Lachlan benefit concert and community events, such as
self-sufficient.
Thanks to that shrewd fi-
riety of programming. In fact, it’s something the theater has always done and still does.
nancial plan, Hawai‘i The- atre’s program budget kept growing — that is, until the pandemic hit. Questions swirled about how to flow
Exciting shows coming up this month are a Napo- leon Dynamite film panel on
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