(Tench Phillips and Thom Vourlas share a laugh and popcorn outside the Naro Expanded Cinema. Photo by Jeff Maisey.)
By Jim Roberts
Tench Phillips III and Thom Vourlas were featured on WTAR News in August of 1977—about two weeks before they opened the Naro Expanded Cinema on Colley Avenue in Norfolk.
“We feel like the only place for this type of cinema is in Ghent,” Vourlas said at the time, “because Ghent is growing. … Colley Avenue seems to be coming back alive. 21st Street is going to be rebuilding. We have townhouses going up in the neighborhood. We feel like this is the only place it can happen.”
Little did they know the role their theater would play in sustaining that growth—or that 49 years later, they would receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ghent Business Association.
For Phillips and Vourlas, the award is not just a recognition of longevity. It’s a tribute to a friendship that shaped a neighborhood, a business that shaped a community, and a life’s work that neither of them expected—but both came to depend on.
“It’s funny to look back,” Phillips said, sitting in the office above the theater they’ve run for nearly five decades. “If things hadn’t fallen into place in a particular way, you and I wouldn’t have had this career.”
A Friendship That Started Before the Movies
Their story begins in an eighth-grade math class at Azalea Junior High School. “He was so small I could barely see him over the pencil holder on the desk,” Vourlas said.
They went to Norview High School together and then headed to different colleges—Phillips to Georgia Tech, Vourlas to North Carolina State. They reconnected in Norfolk in the mid-1970s and rented an apartment on Shirley Avenue, a place Phillips described as “hippie central,” where musicians, actors and friends gathered to debate art deep into the night.
A trip to New York changed everything. “We saw two Ingmar Bergman films,” Vourlas said. “’The Seventh Seal’ and ‘The Virgin Spring.’ That was the epiphany. Suddenly movies became film.”
When a local actor rented the Naro to screen four Bergman films, Phillips and Vourlas brought their friends, watched, argued and imagined what could be.
“We said, ‘Why don’t you keep doing those movies?’” Vourlas recalled. “They said, ‘Somebody just rented the theater and showed them.’ So we said, ‘Well, we’ll do that!’”
Their Bergman festival in 1976 was a surprise hit. By the next year, Phillips had apprenticed with local theater owner Fred Schoenfeld, learning the business. In September 1977, the Naro Expanded Cinema reopened under their leadership.
“We were pretty much a hit from the get-go,” Vourlas said. “Then the winter was kind of tough … but in the spring, we did a schedule that changed twice a week. And then we were off to the races.”
Risks, Arrests and the Art of Survival
When asked about the risks they’ve taken over the years, Vourlas shared a story that has become Naro legend. “We were showing a movie called ‘Taxi zum Klo,’ a gay German film,” he said. “There were 500 gay men in the theater—and a magistrate and a vice squad guy.”
At midnight, police knocked on his door. “They charged us with obscenity. They got me out of bed, made me walk down here and get the print.”
“We thought we were going to play it just that one night and get the print out before anything happened,” Phillips added.
It wasn’t the last time they pushed boundaries.
“We were doing some of the most innovative programming—probably in the country,” Phillips said. “Documentaries with speakers, foreign films, the Faith and Film series. We were first to do all the gay films.”
But the risks weren’t only cultural. “We had to pay guarantees for these movies,” Vourlas said. “You don’t know if you’re going to make the money back.”
Still, the Naro endured—through cable TV, VHS, DVDs, Blu-ray, streaming and, most recently, a pandemic. “There was always something,” Vourlas said. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, this isn’t gonna make it.’ But we kept going.”
A Partnership Built on Fire and Grounding
Their longevity came down to balance.
“Tench brought the fire. I brought the grounding,” Vourlas said. “I’d be more aware of things needed in the theater—maintenance, staffing, making sure prints were in.”
“Pretty much all the business,” Phillips said. “I don’t know what I added. I was very lucky.”
He remembered a moment, years ago, when they nearly sold the business. “Thom said to me, ‘The Beatles split up. I’m Paul McCartney, you’re John Lennon.’ It was one of the best acknowledgments he ever made of me.”
Their roles evolved, but the creative spark never dimmed. “I still want to have that creative outlet,” Phillips said. “The film forums, the documentaries, the Sunday morning series.”
Vourlas is still pitching new ideas. “We should do a series on American directors,” he said. “Kubrick, Scorsese … and I’ve always fantasized about doing a series of Tom and Tench’s favorite movies.” (In addition to “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which plays every December, think “Carousel,” “200 Motels” and “Mulholland Drive.”)
A Changing Neighborhood, A Lasting Legacy
The Lifetime Achievement Award comes at a moment of transition. With the closure of MacArthur Center’s corporate theaters and shifts in film distribution, the future of repertory cinema in Norfolk is uncertain.
“I don’t know if the Naro will have a future as arts repertory anymore,” Phillips said. “I fluctuate between optimism and pessimism.”
Later this year, Phillips and Vourlas will step back from ownership, handing the reins to longtime managers Kate Loftis and Theresa Schindler. As Vourlas put it: “I won’t be the owner. I’ll just be the former owner.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” he added. “I live two blocks away. I’ll still be doing what I do now—advise and consent.”
Even as they transition, they are energized by the next generation of film lovers. Phillips pointed to Kris King’s Film Break Society and the rise of micro-cinemas. “I’d love to see Kris do microcinema,” he said. “It would work.”
A Neighborhood Says Thank You
For the Ghent Business Association, the award recognized not just longevity, but impact.
The Naro isn’t simply a theater—it’s a gathering place, a cultural engine, a refuge for the curious. “People knew us in the whole area,” Vourlas said. “They would drive from Virginia Beach or Chesapeake to come into town.”
Jeff Maisey, the publisher and editor of Veer Magazine and president of the Ghent Business Association, has strong ties to the Naro.
“The cultural quality of life and economic impact the Naro Expanded Cinema has had on the Ghent community over the past 49 years cannot be understated,” he said. “In 1981, I moved to Ghent as a freshman at ODU. The Naro was a lifeline for people of a certain mindset seeking foreign films, art flicks like ‘Liquid Sky,’ concert films such as ‘The Decline of Western Civilization’ and ‘Urgh! A Music War,’ as well as weekly (Wednesdays) non-fiction/documentaries, late-night shows (‘Rocky Horror’), and independent releases. To be ‘Naro Minded’ meant this programming fed your heart and soul.”
Phillips put it more simply: “This was, by far, the only thing we wanted to do.”
Tribute To The Original Theater
The Naro will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the original Colley Theater at 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 24 with a screening of “My Man Godfrey,” a screwball comedy starring William Powell and Carole Lombard.
That date in 1936 was the opening day of the Colley Theater, which was renamed the Naro in the early 1960s (after new owner Robert Levine’s parents, Nathan and Rose).
“We will go back in time to when we took over in 1977 and will charge just $2 admission, and a Ticket Book ticket can get up to 4 people in with just one ticket,” said Tench.
