Published: April 28, 2009 12:18 am         

Week still eventful for Indiana Theatre, despite cancellation

TERRE HAUTE — A comedy show at the Indiana Theatre has been canceled, but a documentary detailing the Historic National Road is scheduled to roll into Terre Haute’s 87-year-old landmark theater this week.

The documentary — “Movers and Shakers: Stories Along the Indiana National Road” — will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday inside the Indiana. Admission to that film by a team of Ball State University students is free.

Meanwhile, the comedy show by “Bob & Tom” radio regulars Bob Zany and Drew Hastings, originally scheduled for this Saturday evening at the Indiana, has been canceled. Slow ticket sales caused the promotion firm — Ken E Mac Presents of Portsmouth, Va. — to cancel the show. Promoter Ken MacDonald informed Indiana Theatre proprietor Roger Aleshire of the cancellation over the weekend.

Canceling, Zany said, is not part of his comedy routine. A veteran of 33 years as a comic, Zany said it was his first show cancellation.

“I feel bad,” he told the Tribune-Star by telephone Monday. “It’s just business.”

MacDonald regretted the cancellation, too. “I don’t think ticket sales were as good as they should’ve been,” he said, accepting the blame for the slow sales.

Tickets were sold exclusively through TicketMaster. People who bought tickets with a credit card will automatically have the cost refunded to their account, MacDonald said. Those who paid cash at a TicketMaster outlet can get a refund at that same location, he added.

Prices were $22 per seat to see Zany and Hastings — both popular performers on the “Bob & Tom” radio show.

Previous comedy shows by “Bob & Tom” comics at the Indiana Theatre were sellouts. But those shows did not limit ticket sales through TicketMaster, which charges extra fees.

For past shows, tickets also could be purchased at the Indiana Theatre box office at face value, and fans filled the historic venue’s 1,500 seats for those performances on April 20, 2007, and Aug. 23, 2008. The absence of the cheaper box-office ticket option could have affected sales this time, Aleshire said.

The promoter set the ticket arrangements, Aleshire said. “It’s their decision, because it’s their event,” he added.

Whether ticket arrangements, the season or Terre Haute’s economy hurt sales most is difficult to determine, MacDonald said. By contrast, tickets have sold well for the Zany and Hastings show on Friday at Evansville’s Victory Theatre, and that performance will go on as scheduled.

Zany said he hopes to book a show somewhere in Terre Haute for this fall. “I’m working on coming back in September,” he said.

Unlike the scratched May 2 comedy event, the National Road documentary is less humorous, yet colorful. It centers on the Indiana portion of U.S. 40, which was the United States’ first federally funded highway. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the byway in 1806, and it stretches from Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill.

“Movers and Shakers” is unique because it features stories told by Hoosiers who have lived along U.S. 40, said Nancy Carlson, the Ball State professor of telecommunications who led the students’ production. Their film was funded through a National Scenic Byways grant from the Federal Highway Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Many travel guides have been written about the National Road, but no one has told the many human stories of building the road, living along it or traveling across it,” Carlson said in a Ball State news release. “You can read the information, but to hear from the families and workers who have lived on the National Road, it makes the stories come alive.”

Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.