ProArts Collective

For ProArts Collective, 2005 was a cruel year. In the spring came the sudden death of company co-founder and guiding light Boyd Vance; then mere months later the equally unexpected passing of company artist Jason Ansara Brooks in the midst of ProArts' annual Christmas production of Black Nativity. Those twin blows might have stopped the company cold, but 2006 finds ProArts still moving. There was a literal move last month, with the ProArts offices relocated from their home on East 13th to 1010 Lydia. Now comes its first theatrical production of the year, and it reveals a rebirth of the company in significant ways. ProArts is producing a new script, one by an Austin playwright, the gifted and award-winning Zell Miller III (The Evidence of Silence Broken, Mad Izms), and for the first time it's aiming a show specifically at youth and family audiences. Fittingly, Miller's play, Kissing the Goodbye, deals with the difficulty of letting go of a loved one who's dying. Pay a visit, and let ProArts show you how it's done.