New retractable screen makes Charles Theatre more multi-use friendly

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles Theatre in Charles City is doing double duty these days. In addition to showing movies most Thursdays through Sundays, the theater’s stage is playing host to productions of school and community theater plays.

With the North Grand Auditorium now under private ownership and access becoming limited, performing arts groups are looking for other venues, and the movie theater has become one of those options.

To help make the theater more reliable for multiple uses, a new movie screen was being installed this week.

Karen Youngerman, manager of the Charles Theatre, said one challenge of using the movie theater stage is that the movie screen needs to be rolled up each time.

“Our old screen was retractable, but it was home-made and we were afraid it was going to fail. Because we’re having plays here for the middle school and the high school, it’s having to go up and down. Stony Point Players will be having their play here,” she said.

To avoid a potential screen failure that could stop movies or plays or both, the theater board of directors decided to purchase a new retractable screen, she said.

“I think it’s going to be basically the same” as far as showing movies, Youngerman said. “It’s supposed to be the same size. It’s just going to be remote-controlled to raise and lower it.”

She said the screen that was in the theater was probably installed in the late 1990s, the last time renovations were done.

The new screen and the hardware to roll it and unroll it arrived Monday in a 33-foot-long plywood box weighing 1,057 pounds. It was resting on eight sets of dollies that were strapped under the box, and it took two fork trucks working together to move it off a flatbed trailer.

Once placed on the sidewalk in front of the theater, one of the fork trucks helped swing the box around and get it pointed into the lobby and headed down one aisle of the theater.

A crew from Quade Construction, including company owner Steve Hubert, Jake Hubert, Dave Brockney and Larry Heeren, along with Brian Anderson from the theater, did the shoving and grunting required to manpower the box down the aisle and up a ramp the crew had constructed from the floor of the theater to the stage.

Steve Hubert said the crew would finish setting up Monday afternoon and probably raise the new screen with electric winches early Tuesday morning, ultimately fastening it to a metal girder in the ceiling at the front of the stage.

“We won’t be done today,” Hubert said Monday afternoon. “There’s a little more to it.”

“They’ve got to be out of here by Friday night at 7 o’clock,” Youngerman joked, referring to the next movie time, when “The Batman” starts its run.

“We’ll be out long before then,” Hubert said. “Barring any serious problems.”