The curtain will rise

The Brick Township Council did the right thing by finally giving the volunteer Brick Community Players a permanent home of their own.

Council members quietly approved a bond ordinance at the Nov. 28 meeting that included roughly $100,000 to renovate two vacant stores in the Brick Civic Center on Chambers Bridge Road to be used as a theater. There was no announcement made that the ordinance provided the money for a permanent home.

But the members of the acting group knew. They sat nervously in the audience, each one wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of a different play the group had performed over the years.

The question is, what took the council and Mayor Joseph Scarpelli so long?

The members of the acting troupe lived like nomads for way too many years. They were allowed to use a multipurpose room in the township-owned Civic Center for performances. But once the curtains came down, everything, sets, costumes and all that goes into a performance had to be trundled away immediately.

They practiced where they could. Sets and costumes were stored in someone's garage. Eighty-five-year-old Ada Cole verbally lassoed any township official she could for the better part of a decade, lobbying for money and space for a decent theater.

Brick is a sports-crazy town. There's nothing wrong with that.

But there needs to be something else for kids and adults who don't want to play soccer, football or baseball.

Janet Lynn Spahr, whose father founded the theater group back in the early 1990s, put it succinctly when she said there was nothing for the "creative little souls" in the township.

Now there is.

Township Recreation Superintendent Andrea Zapcic said the philosophy in the recreation department has changed over the years.

"It's not just about sports anymore," she said.

There's enough room in Brick for both sports and a little culture.