Rev. Bill Ellis (left) and Mike Herron (Advantage Valley) talk with Clay Center CEO Judith Wellington.

October 28, 2008

A Connecticut man wanted to surprise his wife with a special treat on their 25th wedding anniversary, and he bought tickets to see Tony Bennett, her favorite entertainer.

The show was at the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia.

With the surprise yet unrevealed to her, the couple were in an elevator at Charleston's Embassy Suites.

The door opened and in stepped Tony Bennett himself.

"The wife was blown away," Judith Wellington told Putnam Rotarians today.

"You have just ruined my surprise," the husband told Bennett.

"The couple chatted with Bennett, and the singer later sang a song for the anniversary couple in his performance at the Clay Center.

"That would only happen in West Virginia," said Wellington. "If that were in New York, Tony Bennett would have his own elevator," she exclaimed with mock sarcasm. "But here, everybody's equal -- one thing I love about West Virginia."

In five years of operation, the Clay Center has had visitors from 49 states. "If you know someone from North Dakota," she paused to audience laughter, "we'll work out 'frequent flyer miles' to get them here and make it 50 states."

Judith Wellington is CEO and President of Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences of West Virginia.

"Most often people come to Clay Center to learn and to be entertained," she said. "They are entertained, but they also leave having learned something."

The Center hosts over 160,000 visits each year for education, entertainment and -- not least (with a a nod to Mike Herron, of Advantage Valley, recently returned from a European business tour) -- to encourage economic development in the state.

"Among the visitors are some 50,000 school children. They come from all over the state, and 25 to 30 percent of Putnam County students visit each year.

"For economic development, a lot of businesses use the Center when they recruit people from out of the state to show them that there are things to do here, and there is a high quality of life."

While the "headline" programs provide much of the operating funds for the Center, special exhibits from art to antique cars are also sponsored. "We often curate exhibits," said Wellington. "That means that we decide on a topic, and we go about the country and look for paintings or art work that is associated with that topic.

"We also have a permanent collection of art," she said. "We have approximately 800 works of art, and we try to pair an exhibit of our own collection with one of the traveling exhibits."

The Center tries to schedule nine to ten performances in its season. "We have a mixture of genres" -- jazz, folk music, gospel, comedy and theater. There is collaboration with community arts groups -- the Charleston Stage Company, the Charleston Light Opera Guild.

Cancellations are "labor-intensive," she said, commenting on the rigors of day-to-day operation. "On one day of cancellation we called 600 phone numbers, sent e-mails, and mailed letters to everyone who had bought a ticket."

The West Virginia Symphony Orchestra performs at the Clay Center, "and they schedule their artists two years out." Of the limited number of dates in any given year, the Symphony takes first pick.

Other performances are planned through an intensive planning process which includes a public demand and financial review: How popular has the show been in other markets? What is the reasonable ticket price to break even? And finally, a decision often comes down to a strong measure of pure "gut instinct."

The Center books Broadway shows through Jam Theatricals, a company which assists in the routing of shows through some 45 cities.

For the future, the Clay Center through its interactive Avampato Discovery Museum seeks to bring affordable learning opportunities to every child in the state, said Wellington. The Center wants to expand its outreach program with portable and traveling exhibits throughout the state.

"We have four counties in the state which have no arts-related activities -- not even a dance studio," she said.

The Clay Center is changing that slowly but surely.