Augusta, GA
JENNIE: Augusta Players Capital Campaign underway for city’s longest-serving arts organization
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF)– The Augusta Players is the longest existing arts organization in the CSRA, providing professional theatrical experiences for adults and youth for 80 years. And for 80 years they’ve been without a home of their own– but that’s about to change!
Scott Seidl is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Augusta Players.
“This has been a five year journey for us. I mean, we’ve been looking for a place like this since before the pandemic happened. And so when this one was brought to our attention, it was a no brainer. We were just so excited because it’s right there in the heart of the theater district. Literally across the street is the Miller Theater. A block away is the Imperial Theatre on the same block as Le Chat Noir. On the same block is Jessye Norman School of the Arts. And so there’s just a synergy and a energy of community that is a part of just the location itself.”
While the Augusta Players offices have been at Sacred Heart Cultural Center for years, everything else has required Seidl and his team to be quite the nomadic bunch! From rehearsals at the Kroc Center and Jessye Norman School of the Arts, to building props and costumes in other locations, to a warehouse in another location– they are scattered all over the place. Even performances happen in different venues around town.
“And it just limits us because even though all of those places and organizations are very kind to support what we do, we’re also at the mercy of their schedule. And so we have a very finite and specific amount of time that we can be in any one of these locations. And so it kind of limits the offerings that we can present to our community and in the ways that we can help our community as well.”
The Augusta Players is also a social services organization, offering programs like Augusta Readers Theater, for senior citizens…. and Camp Wonderland, for young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. There’s also a new program on the horizon called Enchanted Stages, which is interactive theater for families that have people with disabilities.
“And our ARTreach program bringing over 12,000 kids into the theater on an annual basis. And that material that we present to them supports the curriculum to all the area counties. Like those are things that we do — I think the shows also serve the community in its own way, but these things are specifically designed and detailed to support the needs of our community.”
The community can support the capital campaign in several ways.
“Financially, of course, and when it’s time to move in about 11 months, we can use a lot of hands as well! We have a website, theapcampaign.com, and you can see photos of the renovation and the designs of the renovation and explain some of our programming. And then it offers you a long list of ways you can contribute. There are still opportunities for naming opportunities. If you happen to have the resources to contribute at a high level. But you can buy a brick too. I’ve done a couple of those in the name of my grandmother and my parents, who are both deceased but were so supportive of me. And lots of folks are choosing that path. But also, you know, $5 helps.”
Grand opening for the new home of the Augusta Players is projected to be in May or June of 2025.
You can support the Augusta Players capital campaign by donating here.
A federal commission studying national security will tour an Augusta factory poised to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign biotechnology.
The Manus factory on Lovers Lane uses and improves eco-friendly manufacturing methods to produce Reb M, a sweetener derived from the stevia plant but missing the bitter aftertaste in other stevia extracts.
On March 11, Manus will unveil and explain the major expansion of its domestic biomanufacturing capacity to members of the U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, created in 2022 under the National Defense Authorization Act.
Manus touts itself as a biotech success story. Four years after the 2014 closure of Augusta’s NutraSweet artificial sweetener factory, Manus reintroduced an upskilled workforce to make the factory one of the world’s largest fermentation facilities. There, microbes are engineered to allow reliable mass production of Reb M.
Biomanufacturing often struggles with scalability. Extracting a particular molecule from a plant might succeed in a lab, but teasing out those molecules on an industrial level traditionally has been unsustainable.Reb M, which is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, exists in such small quantities in stevia plants that extracting it using more mainstream methods often was financially impractical, until Manus developed its proprietary production method.
Manus’ Augusta plant produces Reb M for the brand-name sweetener Yume, from the Japanese word for “dream.”
“Biomanufacturing is not a future promise – it’s here now, in rural Georgia,” says Ajikumar Parayil, Manus’ founder and CEO. “The Augusta BioFacility stands as proof that we can reshore production, create high-quality American jobs, and deliver resilient innovation at scale. We are honored to showcase this capability to the NSCEB and contribute to shaping a strong, coordinated national strategy.”
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Voters in Georgia House District 130 headed to the polls Tuesday to fill the seat held by Rep. Lynn Heffner, who resigned.
The Augusta Democrat resigned because she was unable to meet the residency requirement for House District 130 due to damage to her home by Hurricane Helene.
Six candidates are on the ballot — four Democrats and two Republicans.
Early results
Results are coming in. Here is where the race stands:
- Shelia Nelson, Democrat: 45.22%
- Karen Gordon, Democrat: 20.65%
- Sha’Quanta Calles, Democrat: 15.65%
- LaFawn Pinkney-Mealing, Democrat: 7.61%
- Thomas McAdams, Republican: 5.43%
- David Carson, Republican: 5.43%
This story will be updated as votes continue to come in.
Copyright 2026 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.
An Augusta city committee on Tuesday is scheduled to hear an update from the Recreation and Parks Department about nine municipal parks that are so seldom used that they might not be worth keeping open.
A civil engineering firm partnering with Recreation and Parks spent months gathering information on Augusta-Richmond County’s 51 public parks.
The audit by Infrastructure System Management scored the locations using a rubric that measured the sizes of the parks and how close they are to other parks. The audit also counted the number of park visitors to calculate how often the parks were used.
In a previous presentation to the committee last fall, commissioners learned that it would cost about $22 million to bring all city parks up to proper maintenance standards for just the first year.
By comparison, the Recreation and Parks budget is closer to $1.2 million, according to Abie Ladson Jr., a former city engineering director who now directs the ISM consultancy.
The smallest of the nine parks, Alexander Barrett Park, is barely a 10th of an acre, about the size of an NBA basketball court. The wedge-shaped lot where Wheeler Road meets Royal Street is composed of open grass and two playground swings built only for infants and toddlers.
The largest of the nine is the 3.49-acre W.T. Johnson Center on Hunter Street, behind Beulah Grove Baptist Church. Its facilities include a gymnasium and athletic fields.
The parks whose futures will be considered:
- A.L. Williams Park, 1850 Broad St.
- Alexander Barrett Park, 2629 Royal St.
- Bedford Heights Park, 1016 Camellia Dr.
- Doughty Park, 1200 Nellieville Rd.
- Elliott Park, 2027 Lumpkin Rd.
- Heard Avenue Park, 1500 Heard Ave.
- Hillside Park (Vernon Forrest Park), 2101 Telfair St.
- Valley Park, 1805 Valley Park Dr. E.
- W.T. Johnson Center, 1606 Hunter St.
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