Area director's passion for arts
isn't an act

By KATHERINE C. PEARL
Features Writer
Bart Lovins fell in love with performing when he was just 6 years old. That Christmas, he received some puppets, and his father created a theater out of a cardboard refrigerator box.
Lovins and his younger brother came up with voices and story lines for the characters.
"We performed plays for family and friends whether they wanted to see them or not," Lovins said with a laugh.
Now 37, Lovins controls a much more impressive space. He's the director of the Hardin County Schools Performing Arts Center, an 800-seat theatrical complex that features professional dressing rooms, a green room, high-tech lighting and sound equipment and a stage with an orchestra pit.
But just as he did with the cardboard box more than 30 years ago, Lovins will have to use a lot of imagination and determination to make the most of it.

The Acting Life
Lovins had put the puppets aside and began performing with the Youth Theatre of Hardin County and the Radcliff Playhouse when he was in middle school.
Early on, Lovins showed the determination and aptitude to perform professionally, said Betty Marsee, who, along with her husband, Bill, has organized Youth Theatre productions for decades.
"He was fun and already talented," she said. "He worked hard and took it very seriously."
A Rineyville resident, Lovins attended North Hardin High School. As graduation approached, he struggled to decide whether to pursue a career in performing arts or visual arts, a passion he'd inherited from his father who taught art at North Hardin for more than 20 years.
"I knew I liked making people happy and I could do that through performing and art," Lovins said. "Toward the end of high school there was a tug of war between graphic design or theater, and the applause won out."
Lovins went to Western Kentucky University, where he earned a bachelor's of fine arts degree with an emphasis on directing, design and vocal music.
While at Western, Lovins began to act professionally. During an outdoor performance in Galveston, Texas, the old theater adage "break a leg" nearly took on a literal meaning for Lovins. He slipped and seriously tore a ligament in his right knee, forcing him to spend his last year of college on crutches.
Still recuperating from surgery at the time of graduation, Lovins took a job working with props at Stage One Children's Theatre in Louisville.
After he fully recovered, Lovins began traveling and performing with different theater companies.
One of his most colorful stints was playing "Oscar the Grouch" with Sesame Street Live for three years. Dancing around in a 60-pound trash can offered a sense of nostalgia for the young performer.
"Here I was doing puppets again," he said.
Lovins worked with more than a dozen different companies and performed in 45 different states and locations abroad including Japan.
He joined Actors Equity Association in 1992 and left to try to make it in the Big Apple.

New York, New York
Lovins went to New York to perform, but like many struggling actors, he did other things to make ends meet. He worked as a singing waiter, film extra, office temp and construction worker.
"I'm so glad I didn't go straight from college to New York," he said. "It gave me time to mature and make the transition. I saw the world before I moved to New York."
In addition to the lessons he learned on the road, Lovins said he was well served by his upbringing in Kentucky. His notions of southern hospitality and treating people with respect opened doors for him in the city.
"A lot of people don't take the time to be polite," he said. "(My behavior) would catch people's attention."
After acting for more than 10 years, Lovins assumed the role of director and producer.
He worked with different companies including the theater at St. Clements, where he directed the 20th anniversary edition of Bernard Pomerance's "The Elephant Man."
He also formed a company called Spinning Graves Productions. To avoid paying royalty costs, he and the other members would choose works written before the 1930s and then update the content to make it appealing to a modern audience. Lovins said the company's name came from the idea that the authors would be spinning in their graves if they saw the alterations to their work.
The company mounted shows such as the "X-Mas Files," a twist on Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," using the premise of the Fox Television sci-fi series, and a production of "Peter Pan" in Central Park where the pirates were corporate raisers with suits and umbrellas instead of peg legs and swords.

Coming Home
While his shows were getting good reviews and some notice, Lovins was beginning to feel frustrated in New York, unable to break through to the next level in his career.
He began to look for other options and found one in an unexpected place. His stepmother, who lives in the area, told him about Hardin County Schools' search for a director for the new performing arts center being built along with John Hardin High School.
Lovins was hesitant, remembering the lack of support the performing arts received when he was in school. His perspective changed when he saw the new facility while interviewing for the job.
"I came down and took a tour of the building," he said. "From that tour, I realized the level of dedication and how serious the school system was taking the commitment. That got me excited."
Lovins' experience as a performer and a director, his local ties and his passion for the arts made him an ideal candidate for the position, Hardin County Schools Superintendent Lois Gray said.
"He seems like the perfect person of energy, knowledge and desire to make this a very effective project," she said.
Lovins had connections to theater groups throughout the U.S. and abroad, and had a good idea of how theater had developed locally, said Andy Zagar, performing arts instructor at West Hardin.
"He's from Hardin County so he knows us and knows about our school system and what we came from," he said.
Lovins was offered the position and decided to trade in the Big Apple for a big new venture.
"There's a wonderful challenge involved in coming back home to help create an environment for students and the community I wish had been available when I was growing up here," he said.

Future Tense
As director, Lovins is in charge of the day-to-day administrative tasks as well as cultivating the artistic uses for the center.
Lovins said his immediate mission is to make sure the center has at least one quality show a month. Many of the productions, like the tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. that will be performed later this month, will not only teach about the performing arts, but will also offer historical, social, literary and other scholastic lessons.
The center itself will be a teaching tool, giving students the opportunity to see and work with professional-level equipment and apparatus, Zagar said. While students have learned about the different theater tools in books, not having it available was "like going for years without a gymnasium and just telling them about sports," he said.
Lovins' long-term goals include facilitating funding and support for the center and community arts groups and launching a small resident professional acting company.
"If Horse Cave can have a professional company, I don't see why we can't," he said.
The center and Lovins' work will raise appreciation for the arts with young people and present them with new options working both on the stage and behind it, Gray said.
"There are different career options that young people might not have thought of that will now come as a reality because of this," she said.
Besides the cultural advantages, learning about the performing arts teaches socialization skills, problem solving, work ethics, teamwork and self-confidence, Lovins said.
"Those are valuable tools in any profession, not just performing arts," he said.
Katherine Pearl can be reached at 769-1200, Ext. 235.