BR Gallery hosts theater under the stars

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Jun 26, 2009

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Ever notice how the best hot dogs are those served up at baseball games?

It doesn’t matter who’s playing or where. There’s just something about the combination of baseball and hot dogs.

Just as there’s something about eating popcorn at the movies. But not just any popcorn.

“The old-fashioned kind,” John Michael Byrd said. “The kind that’s actually popped in the popcorn machine. That’s the kind we have.”
The kind producing the aroma floating across the landscaped lawn behind Baton Rouge Gallery on this particular evening. This once was the location of City Park’s swimming pool; the gallery served as the pool house.

Now it’s the setting for the next best thing to an old-fashioned drive-in theater. Heck, maybe it’s even better.

Baton Rouge Gallery calls it Movies & Music on the Lawn, an annual summer series featuring silent films on the last Saturday of each month. Kicking off this year’s theme of “Familiar Faces” on May 30 was The Wizard of Oz.

But this wasn’t the classic Wizard known by most. This story is a little different.

Well, make that very different, because the plot focuses on the Scarecrow more so than Dorothy. And Dorothy? She’s caught in a love triangle between the Scarecrow and the Tin Man.

As for the Tin Man, he’s the villain in this version.

And it’s all tied together by live music by Baton Rouge’s The New Zeelanders.

So, it’s here where moviegoers can bring picnic lunches, blankets and lawn chairs. They can even bring their dogs.

And with the $5 admission fee comes the popcorn. Yes, the very popcorn popping up in the machine at the edge of the lawn. It’s where everyone stops before claiming a place on the lawn.

Any place will do, really. There are no bad seats, just as all seats are guaranteed to be good at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 27, when the gallery continues its series with the 1920 version of The Mark of Zorro.