2025 a Masterpiece for County Art Community
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Anderson County’s arts community in 2025 did not announce itself with the fanfare of a single gala or a marquee import but gathered force through the quiet accumulation of spotlights and strung lights, juried scrutiny and midnight rehearsals—a year in which small stages in Pelzer and Federal Street theaters hosted Motown heat waves and Hufflepuff redemption arcs, drawing crowds who might otherwise have streamed Netflix into the humid Upstate night.
The Anderson Arts Center, with new Director Erin Spainhour, stood as visual lodestar, its galleries cycling from the 50th Annual Juried Show’s April-May crush—hundreds sifted for wall space—to summer guild hangs, Shea Abramo’s sardonic “Amerikan Gothic,” and November’s Warhol-inflected Art Auction, where silent bids chased Kusama dots amid immersive pop; the Tissue Art Contest alchemized Kleenex into lobby whimsy, while Art Slam pitted live painters in real-time fever.
GAMAC’s chorale and symphony swelled First Baptist and Rainey Fine Arts with Mahler’s titans in November, Sondheim chuckles via “Make ’Em Laugh,” and a 34th “Merry Christmas, Anderson!” uniting big band and carols; Sonic Lunch sax quartets filtered through library hours, jazz suppers steamed Bleckley Station. GAMAC also chose a new leader, Kylie Herbert, to serve as executive director.
Theater splintered into raucous thirds: Market Theatre romped Ma Rainey’s studio clashes, Little Shop’s Halloween midnight feedings, Wren Park mermaids, and PUFFS’ wand-waving also-rans, its 24-Hour Musical birthing full shows from one sleepless scramble; Mill Town Players in Pelzer countered with grand sets and staging with South Pacific’s Bali Ha’i ballads, Odd Couple slob-neat clashes, and Irma Vep’s Gothic quick-changes, tallying 30,000 tickets amid reno whispers.
Festivals thundered punctuation: Rock the Country’s July finale lured 25,000 for Kid Rock and $17 million spillover; Celebrate Anderson’s Labor Day Kool & the Gang fireworks passed a record with 11,00 in attendance; Southern Soul’s King George packed Civic Center; Ag + Art Tour farmed May trails; Soirée stalled Main Street with stalls and stages (see Observer’s Festival Roundup Story).
Guild calls chased prizes, university camps seeded young hands, Shakesbeer brewed free farce. In a county chasing mill revivals and FILOTs, the arts accrued not as luxury but ballast—one canvas hung, one curtain call chuckled, threading civic breath through the year’s incremental glow.
Here are some detailed highlights:
GAMAC
In Anderson, South Carolina, where the choral swell meets the orchestral crash like humidity against a summer evening, the Greater Anderson Musical Arts Consortium—GAMAC to those who buy the tickets—unspooled its 2025 season not as a calendar of dates but as a sly reclamation of communal breath, drawing listeners into pews and recital halls with the promise of mischief, Mahler, and merrymaking. The year hummed along under Dr. Don R. Campbell’s baton for the chorale and the steady hand of the Anderson Symphony Orchestra, their ensembles weaving through venues from First Baptist Church to Anderson University’s Rainey Fine Arts Center, where free admission for the young and college set hinted at a long game for ears still forming.
The calendar kicked off with restraint, building to November’s double bill: the GAMAC Chorale’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” on Nov. 6, a Thursday-night romp of polkas, Sondheim’s wry “Send in the Clowns,” and other harmonic hijinks designed to coax grins from the front rows of First Baptist, priced at $23 a seat or bundled cheaper in series packs. Ten days later, on the 16th, came “Clash of the Titans,” the symphony’s thunderous launch of its 50th season, pitting Mahler’s First Symphony against Holst’s cosmic thunder with AU Singers in the mix—a Sunday matinee that felt like the orchestra flexing for the decade ahead.
December brought the annual pilgrimage: “Merry Christmas, Anderson!” on the 9th, a Tuesday feast uniting chorale, symphony, and the Electric City Big Band at Rainey for the 34th year running, families filing in for carols and cheer under one roof, the kind of tradition that turns ticket stubs into heirlooms. GAMAC choristers fanned out earlier, too, caroling through the Anderson Library with sparkle and song on the 9th, a prelude to the lights-draped downtown just beyond. September offered a jazzy detour with Ray McGee’s Jazz Club on the 25th at Bleckley Station, $75 plates or $600 tables for eight, the consortium dipping into supper-club territory amid Anderson’s revitalized core.
Smaller echoes rippled outward: the Foothills Saxophone Quartet at Sonic Lunch on November 12th, free GAMAC artists holding court in the library’s multipurpose rooms during midday breaks, a reminder that music in this town doesn’t always demand a full evening. Merch drops on Giving Tuesday nodded to sustainability, reels teasing “Make ‘Em Laugh” snippets amid the fall buildup. As 2025 closed, GAMAC’s calendar edged into 2026 previews—talent showcases, spirituals revivals, a patriotic 250th bash—but the year’s arc stayed true to form: high-caliber harmony pitched as civic glue, pulling a community of listeners, one chuckling chorus at a time, toward whatever comes next.
Arts Center
Anderson, South Carolina’s Anderson Arts Center, that squat brick sentinel on Federal Street where the Upstate’s creative pulse flickers against the fluorescent hum of daily commerce, turned 2025 into a procession of frames and fevered deadlines—a juried gauntlet, a tissue-paper bacchanal, and one Warhol-inflected auction that dared the town to claim its fifteen minutes under the gallery lights. The year unfolded not in grand commissions but in the incremental thrill of openings and deadlines, juries sifting hundreds of submissions for the fifty-year milestone of its flagship show, all while the center’s classes and camps hummed in the background like a perpetual warm-up act.
January set a deliberate tone with Winston Wingo and Winston Cely in the main galleries through February 21st, their works—talk TBA, reception on the 17th—yielding to March’s Youth Art Month exhibit, a kid-powered riot opened on the 9th amid the first stirrings of spring. April brought the big guns: the 50th Annual Juried Art Exhibit in April and May, its opening a ritual crush on the 18th, overlapping Matt Andrews’s “In the Stacks—SCapes” at the county library through the month’s end, photographs stacking up like overdue loans.
Summer swelled with local muscle—the Anderson Artists Guild Membership Exhibit from June 13th to July 18th, juried ribbons dangling over receptions that drew the faithful—before August’s “Amerikan Gothic” by Shea Abramo and Nat Morris claimed the walls through the 22nd, a sardonic nod to heartland unease strung up for First Friday crowds. The calendar’s punctuation came late: November 1st’s Annual Art Auction, themed “15 Minutes” after Warhol, with silent bids on pop-inflected nods to Haring and Kusama, live music pulsing through immersive installations, early tickets snapped up by the 21st; Fred Helk lingered in the atrium through December 20th from a mid-November debut, while “Crafting with Claus” promised familial glue on the 5th.
Off the walls, the center stirred mischief: the 7th Annual Tissue Art Contest beckoned entrants with its lo-fi alchemy, Art Slam’s fifth edition pitting sixteen live creators in real-time showdowns, and a winter juried call lingering into 2026 from a November 16th deadline. Outreach threaded it all—camps for kids, classes for the curious, public art seeding downtown sidewalks—reminders that in a county chasing manufacturing coups, the arts center held ground as incubator, its exhibitions less about shock than the steady accrual of seeing, one hung canvas at a time.
Market Theatre
Anderson, South Carolina’s Market Theatre, tucked into the brick-and-mortar pulse of Federal Street like a backstage whisper amid the downtown’s repaving din, spun its 2025 season into a raucous quilt of Black Bottom blues, carnivorous plants, and twin-born farces—a tenth-anniversary tease wrapped in park picnics and midnight musical marathons, all pitched as civic oxygen for a community catching its breath between acts.
The curtain rose in February with “August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Kristofer Parker mining the 1920s recording-studio clashes through the 24th, horns and heartbreak spilling from over six nights, a Black History Month gut-punch that set the ledger for the year’s racial reckonings to come. March pivoted to Jonathan Larson’s “tick, tick…BOOM!,” Christopher Rose helming the composer’s fevered countdown through the 24th, its one-man frenzy of ticking clocks and thwarted dreams a prelude to the season’s musical muscle.
April’s “Something Rotten!,” that Tudor-era farce of brothers chasing Shakespearean lightning, ran through May 12 under Dalton Cole’s direction and Jennings Thompson’s keys, puns flying thick as Elizabethan tights. June plunged outdoors to Carolina Wren Park for Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” Diane B. Lee corralling Ariel’s undersea splash across five evenings through the 16th, families picnicking under stars to “Under the Sea” as the perfect humid kickoff. August doubled down on al fresco hijinks with Drew Kenyon’s “The Comedy of Errors” at Magnetic South Brewery through the 25th, Shakespeare’s identical-twin tangle of mix-ups and malaprops, brew in hand for the Shakesbeer crowd.
October bloomed gory with “Little Shop of Horrors,” Jonathan “Thor” Raines feeding Audrey II’s bloodlust through Nov. 3, the camp cult classic devouring three weeks of spooky-season sellouts. December capped mainstage with Matt Cox’s “PUFFS,” David Veatch sending Hufflepuff also-rans through seven eventful Hogwarts years to the 15th, wands and whimsy for the Harry Potter faithful. The 11th Annual “24-Hour Musical” erupted August 9 in Henderson Auditorium, cast kickoff the night prior birthing a full show by curtain, the Upstate’s chaotic rite of improv alchemy.
Off the boards, the 2025 Arts for All Gala shimmered as “Down at the OzDust,” its largest auction ever funneling funds to park shows and youth classes, a community barn-raise amid the season’s sprawl. Free library outings like “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” dotted March, outreach threading education into every sold-out stretch. As ballots tallied for BroadwayWorld nods and 2026 whispers of regional premieres leaked, Market’s year felt less like a playbill than a love letter scrawled in sweat and spotlights: arts for everyone, one mistaken-identity mishap at a time.
Mill Town Players
Pelzer, South Carolina—that mill-village speck just north of Anderson where the Saluda River bends like a tired factory whistle—hosted the Mill Town Players’ 2025 season as a rowdy tally of Motown grooves, island idylls, and poker-faced odd couples, all staged in the Historic Pelzer Auditorium under Will Ragland’s steady gaze, the troupe drawing over 30,000 souls (the most in the state) through its eleventh year before tipping into a twelfth abbreviated by looming renovations.
The theater, widely known for some of the most impressive stages this side of Broadway, started February’s “And Then There Were None” kicking off the mainstage with Agatha Christie’s locked-room whodunit through March 2, 10 strangers shrinking one by one in a blizzard of suspicion. April’s ” Heat Wave: The Music of Motown,” erupted in April and May, straight from Hitsville U.S.A. with Temptations twang and Supremes sway, an original concert revue channeling the Sound of Young America into Pelzer’s wooden pews.
June served Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” a classic where Felix Unger’s neuroses clashing with Oscar Madison’s squalor in a roommate farce that proved audiences still craved the clash of neat freaks and slobs. In July and August, the MTPs sailed into Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific,” with Mary Nickles directing the wartime romance of nurse and lieutenant amid Bali Ha’i ballads, prejudices probed under island palms—a Golden Age staple that hummed with “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Honey Bun.”
In a concert series laced it with the classic singer, “Come Fly With Me” crooned in March with seven vocalists backed by an eight-piece band swinging Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole; “Rock-A-Hula!” revived Austin Irby’s “Upstate Elvis” in August, channeling Blue Hawaii hips and Aloha from Hawaii satellite swagger to close the summer sweat. Off-books, “Gold Road” featuring Anderson University’s country band Blacktop Run twanged in September, part of the shows signaling continuity amid the auditorium’s impending facelift.
October’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep” howled in October and November 2, with Cameron Woodson and Drake King quick-changing through werewolf-mummy-vampire spoof as a Gothic penny dreadful, while “A Cool Yule classic Christmas Concert” lit December with sterling vocals of big-band-backed crooners delivering holiday hits in swingin’ spirit under Danielle Horn’s choreography and Julie Florin’s keys. MTP Executive Director Will Ragland’s outfit, born in 2014 to seed affordable theater in the small town, tallied the year as another ledger of full houses and small-town alchemy: big-city dreams on an $18 ticket ($16 for seniors), one curtain call at a time.
Electric City Playhouse
Electric City Playhouse spent 2025 in the 100‑seat room on North Murray with a season tilted toward big-hearted, crowd-pleasing titles, asking local actors to fill out bouffants, bustle skirts and school uniforms with the kind of earnest gusto that defines small‑town American stages.
The marquee draw was a buoyant production of “Hairspray,” the Tony‑stuffed musical that turns a Baltimore teen’s dream of dancing on TV into a pastel‑colored referendum on race, body image and who gets to be seen. The run, stacked over August weekends, sold briskly, the theater leaning into online buzz and urging audiences to buy early as word spread that the Anderson cast could more than handle the show’s propulsive score and quick‑change choreography. Around it, the playhouse returned to literary comfort food with a faithful staging of “Little Women,” inviting audiences into the March sisters’ parlor for a few weeks of earnest sentiment and sibling rivalry, and trusted its younger ranks with a camp‑fueled “Matilda Jr.,” a summer showcase that let “revoltingly talented” kids seize the stage and, for a few evenings, the story.
Electric City slotted in “Wait Until Dark,” the compact thriller about a blind woman stalked in her apartment, selling it as a “heart‑pounding” two‑weekend engagement in October. The play offered a tonal counterweight to the season’s sunnier musicals, reminding patrons that the intimate room can be just as effective when the house is holding its breath as when it is humming along to an 11 o’clock number.
