Vesper Theatre aims to be a blessing in Southside’s ongoing cultural rise
A 1955 former gas station and auto repair shop turned performing arts space in East Point is now in new hands.
On a prime, highly visible corner of downtown East Point in a building flooded with sunlight from the oversized shop windows, co-founders and dancers Rebecca Harman and Jacqui Hinkson are launching a new effort, Vesper Theatre.
Hinkson, who hails from Shelby Township, Michigan, and who trained as a dancer in Atlanta and Paris, is the founder of the dance company Excavate Body.
Harman, who grew up in Sandy Springs, trained as a dancer in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., and then worked as a professional ballet dancer for companies including Miami City Ballet, American Repertory Ballet and Ballet Arizona before founding Atlanta’s Rise City Dance and Neighborhood Ballet. The two women met four years ago at Grant Park’s Neighborhood Ballet where Hinkson now serves as the dance school’s operations manager.
Located in the former Windmill Arts space on Church Street, Vesper Theatre — appropriately named for the constellation of current and former churches nearby — is a five-minute walk from the East Point MARTA station. It will serve, the co-founders say, as an affordable place for artists to create, rehearse and perform work. The 4,500-square-foot building includes a large rehearsal space, lobby and box office and an 80-seat black box theater that can support a variety of art forms from dance to theater to film.
The pair view the space as adaptable to community needs, whether that’s a stand-up comedian in search of a venue or a theater group wanting to debut a work.
The decision to create Vesper was something of a lark. Hinkson jokingly sent Harman an email about the Windmill Arts space becoming available for sale and asked if they should buy it.
Harman in turn asked her husband Steven Harman, a software engineer, “Are you interested? Could we save the building and preserve its use?”
She said she put the questions out there “because I just felt like … we can’t lose a performing arts space.”
The answer was yes. On June 23 the building was theirs, along with a legacy they hope to continue, of supporting emerging artists.
“It’s a space where you can dream,” said Harman of the impetus for naming their space Vesper after an evening star.
It’s the first rehearsal and performance space Harman has owned. The building’s previous owner, Windmill Arts founder Sam R. Ross undertook a massive renovation to bring his own vision of developing and supporting original works to life and staged more than 725 performances at the space after opening it in 2017. Ross said in a press release that though he will no longer operate out of the Church Street space, he will remain active in producing film and theater nationally as Windmill Art Production.
Hinkson and Harman knew from their experience as dancers that making work and finding venues to show it in can be challenging. “How can artists really actually make a living?” said Harman. With Vesper they are hoping to lend a hand. “How can we help? How can we help support that and have a space,” she said.
Hinkson, who just bought a home in Sylvan Hills, a seven-minute drive to Vesper, said the price point for renting and staging work at Vesper will be critical to their mission. In keeping with the ethos of Windmill Arts where she was part of the resident artist program, the cost to use Vesper’s rehearsal and performance spaces will remain affordable.
“It was the only venue that was accessible to me when I was making work and just starting out,” she said.
She’s seen an influx of friends and fellow artists in their 20s and 30s migrating south of Atlanta, to communities such as Capital View and Sylvan Hills. “Because it’s where we can afford to be,” Hickson said. “I think that just means there’s going to be more life and creativity.”
She’s hoping that will help Vesper thrive.
Vesper Theatre will also continue the resident artist program, absorbing the existing Windmill performing artists into its program. Details of Vesper’s residency program are still being worked out, said Hinkson, though the co-founders are planning to give resident artists access to the rehearsal space at subsidized rates and anticipate them performing one show a year at Vesper.
Vesper will also be a satellite location for Neighborhood Ballet, which has a roster of more than 800 students and which Harman hopes will draw students from East Point and other Southside communities.
Harman and Hinkson plan to debut the first classes and performances in August. In the meantime, they are putting finishing touches on the black box theater‘s green room, painting Vesper’s exterior a dark charcoal gray, hiring a technical director, creating signage for their new space and looking for a muralist to christen an outside wall.
Vesper Theatre joins a developing network of Southside arts organizations including Murphy Rail Studios and Temporary Studios in Sylvan Hills, PushPush Arts in College Park and Atlanta Printmakers Studio, the Goat Farm satellite studios and Academy Theatre in Hapeville.
“For me, the Windmill, now Vesper, space is very important to the Southside,” said PushPush Arts founder and director Tim Habeger. “It’s a well- equipped performance venue and a perfect size for independent work.”
“We now need about two or three more spaces filled with performances of all kinds to start really growing the Southside arts scene. Oh, and we need cultural investors to see this growth happen!” Habeger said.
Harman has a related hope of her own: “If we want small businesses like Neighborhood Ballet and Vesper to exist, then we have to show up for them.”