Heather Gallagher, founder of Asheville Performing Arts Academy (APAA), says her decision to launch the business 20 years ago was a leap of faith. “I was young and dumb enough to try it,” she says with a laugh.
After graduating from UNC Asheville in 2002, the Cleveland, Ohio, native decided to stay in Buncombe County to teach. She served as the director of religion, liturgical music and outreach for a kindergarten through eighth grade program. Within her first year on the job, she launched an after-school arts program, initially teaching Irish dance. The program, she notes, is what led her to initiate a career change from teacher to business owner.
In 2004, Gallagher founded the Asheville Arts Center, rebranding it as APAA in 2009. On Friday, May 9, at 7 p.m., she and her team will celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary with a production of Annie the Musical at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. Additional shows will run Saturday, May 10, at 2 and 7 p.m.; the production concludes with a Sunday, May 11, matinee at 2 p.m.
“ I wanted to create a one-stop [place] where people could come and have their voice lesson and then participate in a drama class and have their dance class,” she says. “Asheville has always been an artistic town; but 20 years ago, it was not what it is today. So I saw there was this need.”
Battle tested
From its launch, APAA faced adversity.
One week after opening its original location on Merrimon Avenue, floodwaters from hurricanes Ivan and Frances damaged the building. But the setback didn’t deter Gallagher from pursuing her goals.
By chance, Gallagher knew the creators of Broadway Junior musicals, which launched in 1996. The company specializes in producing condensed versions of classic musicals with young audiences in mind.
Broadway Junior’s Annie JR. became APAA’s debut production. In addition to the shock of surviving the flooding as a new business, Gallagher recalls giving the curtain speech for opening night while being eight months pregnant.
“It was a lot,” she says.
Twenty years ago, fully produced theatrical shows for young people were not the norm in Asheville, Gallagher continues. And the classes that she and her colleagues offered to feed into those productions became increasingly unsustainable.
“ I realized five, 10 years in that it’s really hard to be everything to everyone, especially if you don’t have enough space or enough faculty,” Gallagher says. “There are a lot of factors that need to come together.”
She and her co-workers soon took a look at their core strengths and the areas that they found creatively fulfilling, changing the business’s name to better reflect the performance element of their mission.
“We really focused on a conservatory-level program for theater,” Gallagher says.
Whether or not her students decide to pursue a career in theater, Gallagher and her staff strive to provide them with a high caliber of training. And that commitment to education proved extra valuable in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene.
“ We pivoted, and the second we got the water back, we went, ‘These families and parents need to get their kids in some kind of educational thing while the schools are still out,’” Gallagher says. “So we opened and, for way less than we usually charge, offered educational-based theater camps for two weeks.”
Full circle
Rising rental prices in Asheville have prompted APAA to move multiple times. But the business has called the Shiloh neighborhood of South Asheville home since 2020.
Grateful to the local community for supporting her vision all these years, Gallagher remains committed to supplying local youths with the best theater education possible. Going forward, that focus will increasingly include helping high schoolers prepare for college theater program auditions. The need for that specialty became clear to Gallagher after her daughter recently went through that arduous process.
“ When you’re in performing arts, you have to get into the college academically and into the program itself — it’s almost like two separate auditions,” Gallagher says. “[Experts] say on average, if you’re going into this for college, you have to apply to between 20 and 25 schools just so you have a handful to choose from.”
Aiding her in this mission are colleagues who’ve successfully been through the audition process and are APAA alumni. In recent years, Mary Katherine O’Donnell returned to lead the acting program, and Connor Dalton heads the voice program.
Largely thanks to these two hires, Gallagher feels she currently has one of her strongest overall staffs in the business’s history. And to celebrate the accomplishment of having these former students as colleagues, she cast O’Donnell as Grace Farrell and Dalton as Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks in Annie.
Even more surreal is that O’Donnell was part of APAA’s inaugural Annie JR. production 20 years ago. And in preparation for the celebratory staging, Gallagher is unearthing photos from 2005 and compiling memories from her former students to make the event extraspecial.
“ I’ve reached out to a lot of the alumni to see if they’re around,” she says. “Some of them are sending me little stories back to put in the program. And we’re doing a celebration for whoever is able to come to town on Saturday night.”
WHAT: APAA’s Annie the Musical
WHERE: Wortham Center for the Performing Arts, avl.mx/er3
WHEN: Four performances running Friday-Sunday, May 9-11. Hours vary. $35.50-$43.50
