YNDC, Volunteers Pitch in to Clean Up Youngstown Playhouse - The Vindicator


If Act I was about reorganizing and rearranging old props and Act II centered on making aesthetic improvements, then you could safely say the show’s main themes were community improvement and strengthening partnerships.

“We see the [Youngstown] Playhouse as a tremendous anchor in the community,” said Jack Daugherty, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.’s neighborhood stabilization director. “We want to help the Playhouse realize its full potential to Youngstown’s neighborhoods.”

Daugherty spent time in a warehouse on the property carefully hoisting a series of antique wooden chairs to a narrow loft that also contained old desks, bureaus and cabinets, then carefully organizing the furniture. Both duties were the main parts of volunteer work he performed during a neighborhood cleanup effort Saturday at the Playhouse, off Glenwood Avenue just south of downtown.

A primary aim of the cleanup, which was the latest of YNDC’s monthly workdays, was to fight blight as part of an effort to beautify the city’s Idora Neighborhood. Inclement weather prevented outdoor work from being done, however.

Twenty-five to 30 volunteers, including Youngstown State University students, were in the warehouse and backstage organizing or discarding numerous large and small props that had been used as stage sets. A primary goal was to make everything easier to find, noted John Cox, Playhouse board president. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.