Today we’d like to introduce you to Ken, Davis, and Aria Agle.
Hi Ken, Davis, and Aria, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My Father loved theatre and film. He kept every Playbill of every theatrical show he ever saw and he saw hundreds. He loved movies and even worked part-time in a movie theatre so his kids could see films for free. I actually saw Star Wars 42 times when it came out because I loved it and there wasn’t much else to see that summer. I had the privilege of growing up in Hawaii, Southern Utah and London. In each, we grew to love art: Hawaii at the Polynesian Cultural Center, Cedar City with the Shakespearean Festival and London with its many West-Side theatres. When my brother and I were part of the effort to create a series known as Liken the Scriptures, it was sort of a combination of our Father’s love of film and theatre. After that effort ended, we sort of struggled to find a place to make our creative ventures flourish. After a few years of that struggle, we decided that having our own theatre would give us the option of doing our own thing. In 2018, we were able to rent a building in South Provo. We occupied the west side of the building, which we converted to our 86 comfortable seat theatre. We called it The Hive Collaborative or The Hive for short. It was a lot of fun for the first 18 months. Then Covid hit. We had already felt that we needed more space but loved our current location. Early in Covid, the building where our theatre was housed became available for purchase. The timing was right and we managed to purchase the building. That was December 2020 and it would begin an 11-month renovation of the east side of the building through the efforts of my son and daughter and myself. Those were amazingly long days and just a few squabbles but in the end we were very pleased with our efforts. We opened the new Hive Collaborative in January 2022 and it has been a great experience this past year as we explore what the building can do. The building is designed to achieve the name of our company, The Hive Collaborative. The Hive draws from the hexagon, which is an amazing design that is about efficiency and strength and is found throughout nature. The Collaborative part is about working with others to help them realize their creative venture. We tend to look for projects that are new and believe that our space can foster a creative environment. So far, we’ve had great successes and we feel like we’re just getting started. We haven’t promoted too much as we’ve wanted this year to be one of exploration and discovery as we work out what The Hive Collaborative can be. Right now, we’re actually finishing our final remodel of our original stage. Our new stage will give us greater flexibility and allow us to do many more types of shows and events.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Buying a building when you’re just a family isn’t easy and takes a lot of hope. Then you get to the remodeling phase. We literally put our heart and soul into those 11 months of effort. It was exhausting and tried the patience of everyone involved. But, when you undertake such an effort, you appreciate the end so much more. For this year, we have struggled to settle on our business strategy. We know that we want to offer The Hive Collaborative to help others realize their creative visions and that is central to our mission. We also know that this is a business that needs to achieve financial success to ensure ongoing operations. Finding the balance between the two has been and will likely remain a struggle. However, with each show or event that we do we find that we’re on the right path and we believe that a venue like The Hive Collaborative has an important thing to offer. So many creative individuals need a venue where they can showcase their talents, but they struggle to find a place where they can do just that. We believe that their struggle can be solved by The Hive. We’ll see.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about The Hive Collaborative?
We’re a family business in every sense of the word. The Hive Collaborative was built by a family and is frequently managed by that same family. But, we feel that everyone who comes to the Hive is family. That is the goal of The Hive as we want to provide a place that is both inviting and able to achieve a creative’s vision. We offer a space that we feel is very warm and cozy to those attending. We feel that every inch of The Hive reflects our desire to offer a quality venue. We can both showcase talent to an audience in our intimate, comfortable theatre but also broadcast that creativity to an online audience for live consumption or for future viewing. We offer a space that can meet the needs of almost every type of creative individual. Already, we’ve had photographers, dancers, theatrical productions, podcasts, comedy shows, commercial productions, musical productions, live TV shows and so much more. The Hive is versatile and we strive to meet the goals of those who come to use our facility.
Brand wise, we’re very proud that we’ve managed to meet so many creative needs in our first year of operation. We strive to be fair in our pricing and work with creatives in their budgets. We have some events such as The Creative Collaborative, where we host their monthly broadcast at no cost because they’re a non-profit. We know that we can’t do that for everyone, but we’ve worked to reduce costs for many events where we believe that such a reduction is warranted. We’re proud of our capacity to focus first of the realization of creative vision as a priority to meeting an important niche is the artistic community. We’re also proud of the flexibility offered in The Hive. We have podcast rooms, cyc walls, production rooms, a theatre, shooting spaces and so much more. We feel that our brand is about adjusting to the creative and not the other way around. You can do a lot here at The Hive Collaborative.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
I grew up on the North Shore of Oahu, which was pretty great for a kid in the early 1970s. Every once in a while our family would venture to the big city of Honolulu. One trip, we actually stayed a bit of time at a hotel. That was pretty spectacular of itself. But, we also went to two movies, which was something amazing to me as a kid since we typically went to the theater in Kahuku where furry things would scamper along the pipes on the wall and the floor was a tad sticky to say the least. But, in Honolulu, they had the BIG movie screens and we watched The Cowboys and Fiddler on a Roof. It was pretty magical and I just remember loving the movies and being with family. Some things never change.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thehivecollaborative.com/
- Instagram: Thehivecollaborative
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hivetix
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCj-z1-3bdVJ6yaYAm4fW90w
- Other: Hivetix.com
Image Credits
Katie Rogers @the_tuesday_studio
