Arts and Culture
Thomasville Cultural Center
An exciting arts experience awaits you at the Thomasville Cultural Center, which has served as a community arts center to over 68,000 visitors a year since the 1980s. Diverse exhibitions include masterworks from an extensive permanent collection, nationally toured shows and the work of talented regional artists. The center hosts the annual Plantation Wildlife Arts Festival, and, through a collaboration with the Thomasville Entertainment Foundation, brings nationally celebrated music performers to the Center’s auditorium during a nine-month season. The Center hosts many other music events, including bluegrass concerts, ballets and musicals in conjunction with the South Georgia Performing Arts, a community chorus for children, as well as chamber music, jazz concerts and an adult community chorus, The Thomasville Singers, in conjunction with Thomas University’s music department.
Students of all ages can attend visual and performing arts classes at the Thomasville Cultural Center. The Center also serves as a network for local visual artists and writers. In an effort to promote arts in the community, the Thomasville Cultural Center’s Arts Outreach program provides a full season of productions for area schoolchildren.
Visit the Cultural Center with your family to discover Thomasville’s open door to the arts. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; Saturday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information please visit our website at www.thomasvilleculturalcenter.org.
Thomasville Entertainment Foundation
The Thomasville Entertainment Foundation (TEF) presents an annual concert series featuring internationally renowned artists and ensembles in performances of classical music, jazz, theater, dance and other forms of entertainment. This outstanding six-event series is presented in the intimate, acoustically excellent Thomasville Cultural Center auditorium and attracts audiences from throughout the South Georgia, North Florida regions and beyond.
Founded in 1937, TEF enjoys a reputation as one of the nation’s oldest and most respected non-profit concert-presenter organizations. During TEF’s first half-century, the series featured such luminaries as pianists Artur Rubinstein and Van Cliburn; cellist Yo-Yo Ma; violinists Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin; sopranos Roberta Peters and Kathleen Battle; bass Jerome Hines; The Robert Shaw Chorale; The Boston Pops; Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; Beaux Arts Trio and Canadian Brass.
Highlights of more recent seasons include performances by popular entertainers Audra McDonald, Michael Feinstein, Marvin Hamlisch, and Bobby Short; the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet; Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra; the Cleveland and Tokyo string quartets; the Saint Paul, Orpheus, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chamber orchestras; pianists André Watts, Garrick Ohlson and Christopher O’Riley; violinist Hilary Hahn; soprano Dawn Upshaw and mezzo-soprano Fredrica von Stade.
TEF also sponsors concerts, classes and workshops for area youth, and through its scholarship program, has assisted some of the region’s most promising young musicians. For concert schedule and additional information, please visit www.TEFconcerts.com or contact TEF at (229) 226-7404 or tef@rose.net.
Thomasville Onstage and Company
Thomasville Onstage and Company (TOSAC) has been providing our community and surrounding counties with professional style theatrical productions since 1980. Citizens flock to the group’s cozy storefront theater on Broad Street to see plays of every genre. Classics, musicals, comedies and dramas have all been presented on TOSAC’s intimate stage. Classic theater gems such as The Glass Menagerie, Lion in Winter, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Diary of Anne Frank, Cheaper By the Dozen and Steel Magnolias have been performed, as well as, lesser known works by local playwrights.
Occasionally, the group will take the production to a larger venue if production needs demand it. TOSAC has performed shows such as The King and I and The Sound of Music.
Thomasville Music and Drama Troupe
In 1973, Fred and Winnie Allen, founders of Thomasville Music and Drama Troupe, Inc. moved to the south with their daughter, Allison, from New York City where they worked as professional entertainers.
This outstanding organization has touched many lives, both young and old, during its tenure. The goal has always been to give the youth of this region a unique opportunity to train and perform at the highest level. The work requires their undivided efforts and provides the discipline to achieve in life both on and off the stage.
Thousands of students have learned grace and poise. They have developed their singing, acting and dancing talent while performing in two annual performances, the Spring and Christmas Shows.
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