The stage at the Evergreen Playhouse thrusts itself into a semi-circle of 135 old refurbished seats. It is an intimate setting, where the audience almost feels as if it is part of the performance.
And it is symbolic of the Evergreen Playhouse itself, a community theater project born in 1959 when a group of community members in Centralia and Chehalis thought “Gosh, I sure do wish we could do a play.”
“Absolutely nobody thought the organization would last this long,” said Centralia resident Phillip Wickstrom, a founding member of the theater and one of the actors in the playhouse’s first performance, “Sabrina Fair,” on Jan. 14, 1960.
From that moment until today, the Evergreen Playhouse has been a part of the Centralia community as a nonprofit corporation run entirely by volunteers and paid for with donations, grants and ticket sales.
The first performance, in fact, was financed by selling nonredeemable “stock” in the playhouse to community members at $5 each, Wickstrom said. The group raised $250 this way, a decent sum 50 years ago, which was enough to pay for “Sabrina Fair.”
Ticket sales from “Sabrina Fair” produced enough cash for the next performance, “Bell, Book and Candle.”
Wickstrom, an English and theater teacher first at Centralia High School and later at Centralia College, and his wife, Metta, along with others like Gordon Aadland, Marilyn Crosta, Richard and Joy Lindner, Anne Caldwell, and Frank Rosa, kept the plays coming, vowing that each performance would pay for the production of the next.
And from there, the playhouse has taken on a life of its own, outliving most of its original members and drawing in new supporters every year.
“I don’t believe it lives on because of a particular person,” said Wickstrom. “The area wants and needs a theater, and it gets that from the Evergreen.”
The current location of the theater, on Center Street in Centralia, has been its home since 1972.
The first few shows took place in the ballroom of the Lewis and Clark Hotel. When the hotel sold, the theater troupe moved to the second story of Rita’s Hardware, which was situated where the Key Bank parking lot is now.
When that old building was torn down, the troupe relocated to a building that was once used for teaching high school home economics and is now the Hanson Administrative Building at the college.
This was the Evergreen’s last stop before moving into its permanent home on Center Street. The building was purchased, with a bank loan, from the Church of the Open Bible.
In 1975, the board created a separate fundraising entity known as the Community Auction for Theater Arts to drum up the cash it needed to keep the doors open and the lights on.
By 1979, CAFTA was raising more than enough money for the theater, so the organization opened its doors to grant applications from other community arts groups in Lewis County, Wickstrom said.
Today, donations to CAFTA during its auction every two years are distributed not only to the Evergreen Playhouse but also to Lewis County Community Concerts, the Fire Mountain Arts Council in Morton, and the Centralia Arts in the Schools program, to name a few, according to CAFTA president Harriet Rajala.
According to the organization’s bylaws, 60 percent of proceeds from the auction go to keeping the Evergreen open, but in some years, like this past year, the theater asks for less in order to make sure CAFTA can continue to support its other applicants, Rajala said.
“The October 2009 auction did not go as well as the auction in 2007,” Rajala said. “As a rule, the amount has gone up a little bit every year, but this year it did not. We were able to give some money to everybody who applied for the grant, but not as much as we would have liked.”
Rajala and the Evergreen Playhouse board are not worried about the future success of the theater, however. The theater’s policy of always raising enough money with one play to finance the next has served them well. And support continues to be strong, they said.
Melinda Brein, president of the playhouse board for the last four years, is looking forward to the theater’s next 50 years with an eye toward the younger members of the community and the recruitment of even more adults.
“My drive is to get youth involved, before they’re 30, like it was for me,” Brein said. “And I want to let everyone know the theater is here. It’s not an exclusive club, it’s not the college, it’s not professional — it’s for us.”
Brein and the rest of the directors have talked about starting a community board to keep the governing board informed about community needs and concerns. They also plan on continuing their children’s programs and theater camps, and offering acting workshops for adults.
“There are so many skills you can tie in, backstage, construction, lights,” she said. “You can really pull in all sorts of talent from the community at the theater.”
She has seen the theater transition over the last five years, going from what used to work to what works now, as she puts it. More teens are getting involved. The Web site has been developing. And she said she is always looking for ways to expand the theater’s involvement in the community.
“I think it’s pretty cool that it’s been here for 50 years,” Brein said. “We’re really excited about the next 50. We want to get out there beyond the stage and really get involved with community itself. Get more participation from adults, keep the theater alive. I’m very excited. I think it’s going to keep going strong.”
Dian McClurg is a former Chronicle reporter and current freelance writer living near Silver Creek. She can be reached at dlmcclurg@tds.net.
Upcoming Production
The Evergreen Playhouse will be presenting the play “Over the River and Through the Woods” Jan. 22 thru Feb 7. It will be directed by Norma Rogers. See next week’s Arts and Entertainment section for more details of the play.
