JOURNAL
There’s No Business like?
Bill Barksdale, Columnist
Show business! I remember years ago Mavis Bromaghim, “Grandma Mavis” to almost everyone, telling me about The Willits Players which was the ancestor of the Willits Community Theatre. “We used to pull a flatbed truck up to a park and do plays off the back” she told me excitedly as she recalled her younger days. A snippet of Willits’ cultural history.
I remember seeing plays at the Grange when it was a musty relic, not the lovingly restored community treasure it is now, and the Willits United Methodist Church has been such a friend to the performing arts in our community. Then in 1992 local theater aficionado, Brooks Darrow, called one day and asked me to look at a building he and some theater friends were considering converting into a permanent theater for Willits. I walked into an abandon car repair garage at the intersection of West Van Lane and Muir Lane behind the Van Hotel.
“What do you think?” Brooks inquired. I couldn’t quite picture it although I’d seen less likely spaces in New York like the long, narrow Astor Place Theater that was more like a tunnel than a theater. Brooks was a rare human. His every breath was a creative exhalation. Over the ensuing months a group of innovative, hardworking volunteers worked on the space.
Sometime later the Board Chair for the Willits Community Theatre invited me to see what they had done. I was astonished, and I mean that, to walk into a jewel of a theater! “We need someone to take this place for a test drive” Lanny Cotler said. It was more of a request than a statement. He knew I had a theater background. “You can choose any play you want. See what this place can do.” I chose to direct the special-effects loaded gothic thriller The Haunting of Hill House, to open around Halloween.
We installed a sound system. Joe Dowling, who had been a lighting designer in San Francisco used every lighting instrument we could get our hands on to create eerie effects bringing Brooks’ magnificent haunted house set to life. John Beatty spent a month recording and laying down tracks for the complicated sound effects. We had a production crew of 27 people and a cast of 7 actors! Collectively we spent literally thousands of hours to create the play. As Director I worked on it for 10 months. The Haunting of Hill House ran for a month to sold-out houses.
Over the past 30 or so years WCT has produced many live performances, plays, music and dance. Classes have been taught in all aspects of theater production including directing, technical training, acting, children’s theater – and many hundreds of locals have donated uncounted thousands of hours to bring live entertainment to Willits. Thanks to a generous bequest from an early Managing Director of WCT, the late and beloved Donna Vaiano, the theater has managed so far to make it through the pandemic. A dedicated Board of Directors and Producer Mike A’Dair have continued to work behind the scenes to keep things together.
Why have a live theater? Well, live entertainment is fun and from a purely financial aspect, Arts and Culture in 2017 accounted for $877.8 Billion dollars to our nation’s economy in 2017! That’s 4.5% of U.S. gross domestic product – more than construction or transportation and warehousing, travel and tourism, mining, utilities and agriculture per the U.S. Department of Commerce. Even in Willits a number of paying jobs are created by theater and the arts. Also, when people go to the theater they often support other businesses like restaurants and local shops. Everybody benefits.
In addition WCT and Willits Center for the Arts, a good friend to WCT, supplement the local school system with programs for students. A number of Willits students have gone on to careers in the arts. Theater teaches team-building, leadership skills, painting, music, technical skills, budgeting, sewing, construction, overcoming fear, even management skills. Friendships that often last a lifetime begin at the theater. People learn the nuts and bolts that spark creativity and problem solving. One of the great, overlooked values of the arts is that they teach people how to think outside the box. That’s a vital skill entrepreneurs require to innovate and create new businesses and jobs. In California the arts are top job creators.
You can help insure live entertainment and instruction survive in Willits by sending a donation in any amount to WCT, P.O Box 80, Willits CA 95490. WCT’s website is at wctPerformingArtsCenter.org where you can click on the Donate button. For a season ticket subscription of just $7.00 / month you can see everything they do. What a deal! The theater is currently producing some online content, and when it’s safe it will once again provide live entertainment, education for children and adults, opportunities for volunteers behind the scenes and on stage, creativity, and the treasured friendships that result from working together. Discover and support vibrant live theatre in our community. As the most inclusive of all the arts there really is no business like show business.
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