Bring It All Together

By Dorothea Rahn

The really interesting tale of the playhouse is how it came to be --- how it was created, how it grew, and what happened to this remarkable group of participating artists. Unfortunately, it's not easy to talk about TLP in terms of decades because the sequence is more like indefinite periods of time: the first period consisting of the stages of development, the second, the stage of maturity.

During the first period, there were basically three stages: The founding seasons 62-64, the developing seasons 65-72, and the expanding seasons 73-79. The second period evolved into the mature years 1980 to the present.

In the beginning, the theatrical focus was on staging plays which brought live theatre into a rural area, alternating between comedy, classics and an occasional musical in the hopes of attracting the talented artists who were extremely interested in expanding their theatrical skills (as well as their resumes) because they seriously wanted careers on the stage. (As time went on, many did work in the business as…actors, directors, managers, writers, costumers, technicians, educators, performers, professors, designers.) When audience tastes clamored for more entertainment than enlightenment, the focus of a mature TLP shifted from the serious t0 comedy/musical theatre.

In 1961, the concept of a summer theatre was bringing together a group of professionals, semiprofessionals, actors, directors and technicians all looking forward to an opportunity to explore the performing arts by experiencing a variety of roles with the understanding that if they did not have a major part on stage, they could build sets, clothe the performers, sweep the house, or anything else which needed to be done. In other words, stage plays. The first companies consisted of a dozen or so people of varied talents.