Wild Dames Make It a Night at Center Place as the 'School House' Rocks

Wild Dame Night at Center Place is an annual fundraiser for children’s programming, which includes lots of live theater and art classes designed to round out a child’s passion for performing, learning and creativity.

The event traces its roots to Wild Game Night, an annual fundraiser of the Rotary Club of Brandon, which at one time — and for a long time — was a gents-only club. Wild Dame Night was a place to go for the ladies whose husbands were busy at Wild Game Night.

Times change but traditions hold and each year — still — both the Rotary club and Center Place hold their annual fundraisers.

This year’s 20th Anniversary Wild Dame Night, like every Wild Dame Night, carries a theme, and attendees dress and act accordingly.

Also, Stages Productions, a traveling theater troupe that provides much of the live theater at Center Place, stages a theme-specific tribute for the occasion.

This year’s theme, “School House Rock — St. Catherine’s School for Naughty Girls — It Rocks,” set at a Catholic school, inspired many, if not most, of the attendees to dress like schoolgirls and nuns.

But all is not in jest.

According to Center Place officials:

• Proceeds from the 2010 Wild Dame night allowed for more than 15,000 children to attend live theater performances at the center, which shares space with the Brandon Regional Library in the Sandy Rodriguez Center, at 619 Vonderburg Drive.

• Stages Productions has been performing at Center Place since 1992. More than 246,000 children and adults have attended more than 990 Stages Productions at Center Place.