The newly remodeled Granada Theatre will offer classic movie nights every first and third Thursday of the month including their presentation of “Guys and Dolls” tonight at 7 p.m.
“Everybody loves coming here,” said Jessica Buchholz, director of the Granada Theatre. “It’s so nice to come in here. People around you are laughing and having a good time. It’s a lot of fun.”
Tickets are $4 and can be purchased at the door, at the Sweet Granada or Granada Coffee Company.
“It’s a great type of entertainment for people of all ages in the community,” Buchholz said. “It’s something fun to do during the week day that’s really low cost. We also offer really inexpensive concessions.”
The classic movies that the Granada plays are movies that originally had opening debuts in the Granada years ago.
“The Granada used to be a movie theater,” Buchholz said. “That is what people remember about growing up or going to school here, going to see movies. We thought it would be a great idea to offer those movies again.”
Marge Trayor, emporia resident, grew up in Cottonwood Falls but still remembers coming to the Granada to watch movies.
“I did go there many years ago, a few times,” she said.
The Granada will always take suggestions.
“We look at what were the great classics,” Buchholz said. “But we always take suggestions from our patrons and people in the community. If it’s a movie that we get a lot of questions about or requests for, we research it to see if there it is a title that we are able to show.”
Some of the movies bring back memories for the attendees.
“I suggested two of the ones they’ve chosen because they had special memories for me,” Trayor said. “And besides that, they were good.”
The Granada can seat over 800 people and usually is about half-full for the classic movie nights.
“It’s an elegant, beautiful theater and I love it,” Trayor said. “I really enjoy attending the wonderful different events there.”
The demand for movie night was so high that The Granada decided to have the showings twice per month instead of one time.
“We had so many people request to have it more than just one time per month that we moved to two,” Buchholz said.
The Granada also offers encore movie nights the fourth Wednesday of each month.
“The encore movies are movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Buchholz said. “We wanted to put a different spin on it and get some of the younger people from the community in the theater.”
The encore movie for this month will be “Top Gun” showing on Wednesday.
“We want to be a real driving force in the arts and entertainment district of Emporia,” Buchholz said. “We want to be able to offer different types of entertainment for the Emporia community. There is something new to do here in town.”
Ashley Peaches/The Bulletin