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By MELODY PARKER, Courier Arts / Special Sections Editor

WATERLOO --- Theater is nothing without a little drama and farce.

Just days before the Hope Martin Theater opened for its first performance in 1965, the theater had no seats. The orchestra pit was a yawning chasm to the basement. Managing Director Charles Stilwill ran up and down a 2- by 12-foot board to access the stage from the house.

"I was a young man then and thought it was fun," Stilwill recalls, laughing. "We got the last row of seats installed on opening night. It was a little frantic. The farce 'You Can't Take it With You' was a sell-out, our grand opening."

And the theater's version of wishing an actor good luck --- "break a leg" --- threatened to become a reality because there wasn't enough power to run all the lights. "We ended up illuminating what we needed to on stage, and hoping we hit the target. It was theater-by-the-seat-of-our-pants."

As the Waterloo Community Playhouse prepares to ring down the curtain on its 90th anniversary season, which ends in May with another farce, "Who's in Bed with the Butler," Stilwill is in a mood to reminisce.

There's a romantic view of community theater, the kind of Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland 'let's put on a show' notion. But it takes many volunteers and long hours to bring a show to the stage. The actors, the crew, the professional paid staff, we all want to present a professional-quality show to our audiences. Once you've been involved in community theater, I think you always have an appreciation for the work it takes," he explains.

"Jerry Finnegan's Sister" is next on the schedule, March 23-31.

Founded in 1916, WCP is Iowa's oldest community theater, and among the oldest, most continuously operating community theaters in the U.S.

Miriam Marsh returned home to Waterloo in 1916 after graduating from Vassar and formed a drama league, hired a full-time director, Carl Glick, and set up a theater in a remodeled Methodist Church at Fifth and Jefferson streets. The Waterloo Community Drama League presented "A Woman's Way" as its first production, and within two years, was producing nine evening plays and 13 one-act plays.

One season's highlight was an outdoor pageant, "Joan of Arc," performed for two nights at Byrnes Park. The cast numbered 363, including "bright and buxom lassies," peasants, soldiers and choir boys. It took 77 people to crew the show.

Interest lagged when Glick left for military service during World War I. The league resumed when he returned, with performances at the Brown Opera House, now a metered city lot across from the Waterloo Public Library. The league renamed itself Waterloo Community Theatre, and later, Waterloo Civic Theatre. Glick exited stage left, and Don Ames, a West High School drama coach, took over directing duties in 1939. World War II began and many members enlisted.

After the war, the theater set up shop in a building on West Fourth Street and performed at West Middle School. The group became homeless in 1959, when the structure was torn down. Ray Forsberg offered digs in the old furnace room at the Recreation Center on East Fourth Street. The space could seat about 63 people. "Theatre in Your Lap" became the smallest theater in the U.S., according to records.

The playhouse and rec center moved to temporary quarters in the Walker Building in anticipation of the new Waterloo Center for the Arts. In 1963, Faye Martin Anderson donated $100,000 to build a theater in memory of her late father, C. Hope Martin, at the center. The playhouse moved into its new home in 1965. Stilwill was hired that year, left after two years, and returned again in 1970.

In those early years, Stilwill directed community casts in such shows and musicals as "The Sound of Music," "1776," "Cactus Flower" and "Hello Dolly." The merger with Black Hawk Children's Theatre took place in 1982.

In recent years, playbills have included "Inherit the Wind," "Deathtrap," "West Side Story," "A Man for All Seasons," and last summer's "Cats." This summer's musical is "Footloose."

One of WCP's strengths is its lengthy list of acting talent and volunteers who return year after year. Bev McCusker, who has amassed a list of plum roles since the early 1980s, is impressed by the number of people whose involvement stretches back 25 years or more. "It's a sense of history. New people are always coming, and I love that."

For audiences more in tune with electronics such as DVDs and video games, live theater "connects them with real people doing a live performance that can't be paused, rewound or fast-forwarded," she adds.

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90 years of drama

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