Crystal Theatre seeks funding from Gonzales County

For more than 25 years, the Gonzales Crystal Theatre Young Program has been dedicated to providing “arts-in-education opportunities for young people from all backgrounds” while serving as a safe place for Gonzales’ youth to gather and enrich their lives.

Barbara Crozier, the director for this one-of-a-kind non-profit project, asked Gonzales County commissioners on Monday, June 12, to consider providing additional funding, if possible, to the program, especially since the closure of the Gonzales County Youth Center last year.

“The Crystal Theater, which has been serving our community since the early 1980s, has had the only continually functioning youth program in the area — in all of Gonzales County,” Crozier said. 

Crozier said the Crystal’s program “actually grew out of the Youth Center” but they did not share funding.

“That confused a lot of people that thought we were getting funding whenever the Youth Center was being funded,” Crozier said. “We were able to get funding through organizations and endowments over the years, but our program needs to be stabilized long term for our community. It is my goal that some day, a long time out from now, when I am not here to be the driving force on it, that it continues in earnest because it is such a gift to the youth of our community.

“A lot of people thought the funding that was going to the Youth Center was going to go to our work since we are now the only functioning program now.”

Among the programs offered by the Crystal Young Program are the year-round Shakespeare Ninja Project, as well as the Crystal Summer Youth Workshop and the Young Texians Troupe, which performs original Texas history ballads about the founding of Gonzales, the “Lexington of Texas,” including each year by invitation at The Alamo in San Antonio.

For the past dozen years, the theatre has been affiliated with Camp Shakespeare at Winedale and has given students scholarships to participate in that program, which is the only educational Shakespeare group that “is actually blessed by British Shakespeare program,” Crozier said.

Commissioners agreed to consider the Crystal Theatre for funding when it comes time to discuss the proposed fiscal year 2024 budget later this year, but they also then voted to donate the proceeds from the sale of scrap metal from both Precinct 1 and Precinct 3 to the Young Program at the Crystal during Monday’s meeting.