| Festival
Theatre’s History in the St. Croix Valley
In June
1990 Peter Vaughan of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote,
“a better name for the fledgling St. Croix Festival
Theatre might be the Serendipity Playhouse.” Once
you know the story behind the theatre, you may be inclined
to agree.
Just
four months prior to Vaughn writing his article, a young
trio of theatre professionals had just discovered that their
plans to launch a summer playhouse in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
had fallen through. A casual newspaper clipping about an
historic theatre space being spruced up in a river town
just 50 miles from the Twin Cities seemed a suitable substitute,
and soon Carrie Classon Smith as Artistic Director, Andrew
Jensen as Business Manager, and Jason Smith as Technical
Director arrived in St. Croix Falls to marshal support and
enthusiasm for their dreams and successfully produced a
rotating repertory that included The Show Off, Billy Bishop
Goes to War, and School for Wives.
The
following year, 1990, St. Croix Festival Theatre was formally
founded as a non-profit 501(c) (3) corporation to provide
St. Croix Valley residents and visitors to this scenic region
with highest quality of live professional theatre. In the
years since, Festival Theatre has produced more than 100
plays for more than 200,000 St. Croix Valley residents and
visitors. Were it not for Festival Theatre, many audience
members would have an hour or more drive (each way) to the
next nearest professional theatre.
Festival
spent a few seasons producing theatre in Osceola’s
Art Barn, but returned to St. Croix Falls in 1996. As Classon-Smith,
Jensen, and Smith moved into roles on the Board of Directors,
James L. Walker and Marilyn Mays became Artistic Director
and Business Manager in 1997, co-leading the theatre for
two seasons. In 1999 Kate Riley and Pat Placzkowski were
recruited from the Acting Company and led the theatre as
co-Artistic Directors through the 2001 season. In 2002 Chris
Reeder became the Artistic Director and served until 2005.
Mark Baer joined Festival as Managing Director from 2003
to 2005. Our current leader is Executive Director Danette
Olsen, who began her tenure in February 2006.
As Festival
Theatre has grown over the past eighteen years, so has its
commitment to the community. In 1998, Festival Theatre was
named One of the Top Ten Theatres in America making a difference
in their Community by Stage Directions magazine, a national
trade journal. In March 2001, Festival Theatre was named
Business of the Year by the St. Croix Falls Chamber of Commerce,
in recognition of the theatre’s outreach programming
and community involvement. Since 2001, the Student Matinee
Series has served over 8,000 area students. Following severe
back-to-back operating losses in 2004 and 2005, Festival’s
Board of Directors reorganized with a transitional business
plan and completed the 2006 season in the black and a record-setting
holiday show, Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates. Danette
Olsen was named Business Person of the Year by the St. Croix
Falls Chamber of Commerce.
Festival
Theatre’s contribution to the community has also attracted
and developed support from hundreds of local businesses
in the form of in-kind donations, a growing subscriber base
of nearly 1,000 individuals, and more than 100 dedicated
volunteers who help out with various projects throughout
the year. St. Croix Festival Theatre has truly become a
community and cultural resource that makes a difference
in the lives of people living in and visiting the St. Croix
Valley.
History
of the St. Croix Falls Auditorium
In the late 1800’s
St. Croix Falls was undeniably a bustling river town. In
fact, when the village was incorporated in 1888, a village
hall was built on the 200 block of North Adams Street. The
hall served as both a municipal government and social center
of the community for many years and was utilized evenings
and weekends for dances, concerts, commencement exercises,
and gatherings of all kinds.
As St. Croix
Falls continued to grow, citizens interested in cultural
endeavors made a case for the construction of a municipal
auditorium. Not long after the Standard Press ran a front-page
notice of a “mass meeting to ascertain public sentiment
in regard to building an Auditorium . . . to cost not less
than $15,000,” the St. Croix Falls Village Board contracted
architects from St. Paul to design the proposed structure.
The citizen's dream of an Auditorium was finally coming
to fruition and on October 22, 1915, the general contractor
John F. Lindhart of Frederic was awarded the contract for
the sum of $11,170. Swanson Brothers of St. Paul was awarded
the heating contract at $1,314, and P.J. Aune of Milltown
was awarded the plumbing contract for the sum of $365.
 In
May 1916, the Village Board met with both the architects
and general contractor to discuss and approve revisions
to the plan which would cost an additional $5,400. Construction
continued through most of 1916 and in January 1917, while
World War I raged overseas, citizens of St. Croix Falls
gathered to watch one of the top silent films of the era
– The Battle Cry of Peace - in their new Auditorium.
The vision by
early residents of St. Croix Falls for the Auditorium was
twofold. The 45’ by 95’ multi-level building
had been planned to house a civic community center on the
street level and upstairs, where they placed the stage,
touring vaudeville shows and opera companies would perform.
Unfortunately, live theatre would be decades in coming for
the residents of this scenic river town, for it seemed that
St. Croix Falls was too far from the Twin Cities and its
population too small for touring groups to anticipate financial
success. Furthermore, World War I and the Spanish Flu undoubtedly
made it difficult to promote public gatherings that relied
on disposable income for entertainment.
When it became
clear that touring theatrical and opera companies were difficult
to book into the upstairs portion of the Auditorium, the
city contracted R.O. Pepper to relocate his movie business,
Bide-A-Wee Motion Picture Theater, from the original village
hall on Adams Street to the palatial Auditorium on North
Washington. Built to seat over 400 on the main floor and
surely another 100 or more in the balcony, the performance
space of the Auditorium included a proscenium arch stage
complete with a fly tower for easily moving back drops into
place. When the movies came in, the original scenic opera
drop (which doubled as a fire curtain) was flown up into
the tower and forgotten. Painted in 1916 by Twin City Scenic
Studio of Minneapolis, the drop was discovered in the summer
of 1989 as the Friends of the Auditorium Theatre prepared
the building for use in producing live theatre. Patrons
to the Festival Theatre frequently have the opportunity
to view this tremendous historical find as it has been used
as the back drop for most Music Series performances starting
is 2002.
During the 1918
conversion to a movie house, the Auditorium’s balcony
had to be altered to accommodate the new projection room.
At the center of the lower half of the balcony, the original
stepped floor was removed and the floor leveled. Due to
potential fire hazards created by projection room technology
of the era, the room was made non-combustible from the inside-out
by adding a concrete floor finish on top of the existing
wood floor and a skim coat of concrete finish to the walls
and ceiling.
Silent films
ruled the days until 1928 when the “talkies”
came into play. During the silent film era, local musicians
(generally pianists or organists) were employed to provide
live background music six days a week - but never on Sundays.
Then, quite a stir occurred in the early 30’s when
General Electric came to town with sound experts in tow.
It was at that time that acoustical tiles were suspended
from the original ceiling and added to the walls.
As a civic community
center, the Auditorium featured a street level kitchen and
gymnasium to accommodate dances, holiday programs, sports
activities, piano recitals, high school commencement exercises,
and even political events such as a 1936 dinner preceding
a speech by U.S. Presidential candidate Norman Thomas (Socialist
Party), whose running mate was Polk County Legislator, George
A. Nelson (Milltown). Spectators could watch their town
team play basketball from the area now called the Mezzanine
Café, which opened to the east overlooking the gymnasium.
In her wonderful history, St. Croix Tales and Trails, Rosemarie
Vezina Braatz reports that the gymnasium “was pressed
into use by volunteers rolling bandages for the Red Cross
during World War I, and for rallies to support the war effort
. . . in 1918, it became a hospital during the influenza
pandemic that wracked the world.”
In time, newly
constructed public schools would provide space for ballgames
and such, freeing up the street level of the Auditorium.
The space did not stay dormant for long as it was leased
to a variety of sewing factories. In the early 1970’s
the street level of the multi-faceted building was remodeled
yet again and the library and city offices called it home.
Since 1994, when the new city hall was built, the library
has occupied most of the first floor of the Auditorium,
with Festival Theatre utilizing the very front for their
central box office and public restrooms.
In the spring
of 1961, the St. Croix City Council contracted for the design
and construction of a new entrance to the Auditorium, resulting
in a twenty-two foot addition stretching to the sidewalk
on the west side of the building. In order to accommodate
the new entrance, the original central double doors and
single doors on either side, along with ornamental brickwork,
were removed. Also removed were the original check room,
women’s room, ticket windows, and the first set of
stairs with landings.
When the movie
theatre moved next door in 1985, the upstairs theater space
went unused until The Friends of the Auditorium Theatre
were issued a lease in 1989 by the city and then leveraged
thousands of hours of volunteer work as well as thousands
of dollars to begin the process of cleaning and redecorating
the building. In 1990, Festival Theatre, an equity company,
began producing theatre in the space originally created
for that purpose. The residents of St. Croix Falls and surrounding
communities now had the opportunity that the citizens of
long ago only dreamed of. Today there are patrons of Festival
Theatre who are children, grand-children and even great-grandchildren
of the very same insightful citizens who first began this
long journey of bringing live entertainment to the valley.
With history
as its guide, Festival Theatre has and continues to work
closely with the city to continue renovations, including
major structural and mechanical efforts such as replacing
the roof, dealing with electrical and air conditioning issues,
and the dramatic removal of the 1961 lobby addition. In
October 2006, the building was named to the Wisconsin Register
of Historic Places and in January 2007, the 90th anniversary
of first opening to the public, the Auditorium was named
to the National Register of Historic Places. In May 2007,
the City of St. Croix Falls committed funds to complete
a master plan for rehabilitating the historic structure
and explore green alternatives for all aspects of renovation
and future building operations. The master planning process,
led by Claybaugh Preservation Architecture (Taylors Falls),
and will be completed by December 2007.
Though there
is much restoration work yet to do, the historic Auditorium
has been fulfilling its original purpose since 1990 and
nobody can say it better than local historian and journalist
Rosemarie Braatz, “after 72 years of standing in the
wings as a motion picture house, [the Auditorium] is now
in the limelight as St. Croix Falls’ live theater.”
Information
gathered from St. Croix Tales and Trails by Rosemarie Vezina
Braatz, the Historic Structures Report of the Historic Auditorium
Theatre prepared by F.J. Sabongi, Historic Structures Specialist,
and dozens of conversations with community members.
|
Danette
has enjoyed a circuitous journey from her youth in Luck,
Wisconsin to executive staffer at Festival Theatre. With
a degree in Theatre and English from UW-River Falls along
with professional experiences in banking, bookkeeping, and
bookselling, Danette began bringing those skills and interests
together in the mid-90’s while living in River Falls,
Wisconsin. 
