ArtsCape shifting to local focus this year

The Arts Council of Southeast Missouri will spend less on this year's ArtsCape community arts festival and change the event's focus, citing a lean budget and a new vision for the annual event.

ArtsCape, which this year takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Capaha Park, has in the past relied on touring musicians as a supplement to the various arts activities offered at the festival. The idea, said previous arts council board chairwoman Claudia Ruediger, was to offer the ArtsCape crowds -- between 2,000 and 3,000 the last two years -- something they can't normally see in Cape Girardeau.

Last year the Grammy award-winning music group Trout Fishing in America headlined the festival. Brother Henry -- a Nashville, Tenn.-based band that opened the Tunes at Twilight series last year and will open this year's series Friday -- also performed, along with local music mainstay Bruce Zimmerman.

Ruediger, no longer a board member, said she and former board members Rhonda Weller-Stilson and Dennis Seyer "saw ArtsCape as a priority festival that could bring a whole lot of people into Cape, all kinds of people. It was a priority to bring in a diversity of music."

That festival cost the Arts Council about $11,000, Ruediger said.

This year's festival, the seventh ArtsCape, will probably cost about $6,500, said Delilah Tayloe, executive director of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri. A key reason for the change is funding from the Missouri Arts Council, which awarded the entity $11,716 in grant funding for 2007-2008. In fiscal year 2000, the local council received $22,000 in grant funding.

The 2007-2008 allotment is likely to increase, as the state legislature has appropriated $3.3 million more in funding for the Missouri Arts Council over last year. However, the excess money won't be awarded until at least June, said Missouri Arts Council executive director Beverly Strohmeyer. Representatives from the state council will visit the local board soon for a routine training session to discuss how to use the funding and board members' duties, Strohmeyer said.

Tayloe said the board is trying to offer the best service it can with limited funds.

"We're trying to keep all of the programs we've traditionally offered and so as much as we can to continue on with the programming that has been established," Tayloe said.

For the seventh ArtsCape, she said, that lack of money means a change in the festival focus. Instead of pricey touring acts, the festival will rely on entertainment from local dancers and musicians, and escape artist Mario Manzini. Manzini is the centerpiece of the entertainment offerings with his escape from a straitjacket while suspended from a burning rope. The acts will be performed on the main stage -- the Capaha Park Bandshell -- and a children's stage in the park.

Other local entities, like the Tunes at Twilight concert series, already bring in those touring acts, and Tayloe said the council feels there's no need to offer the same entertainment at the festival, especially with a tight budget.

"It's the creative expression of the soul of Cape Girardeau that's on display," Tayloe said.

The festival will also change its layout, with more food and arts vendors setting up along Broadway instead of in the park's recesses.

For more information on the festival, call the arts council at 334-9233.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182