On with the show! WWCA remaining in Port Orchard
Published 1:30 am Friday, May 3, 2024
Over two decades of plays, musicals, holiday celebrations and junior camps inside the walls of the Western Washington Center for the Arts have done much more than just entertain audiences along the Port Orchard waterfront.
They have created long-lasting friendships and unlocked new levels of love and appreciation for the arts, but even with some of those memories set to be abandoned in a heartbreaking move away from the historic facility, artistic director Rebecca Ewen hopes to see them rebuilt in the theater’s new home about a quarter-mile away.
“I remember walking through the walls of the WWCA before they were built,” she said. “We’ve been able to come up with several ideas of how to make it work. This was, for the first time, exciting and inspiring for all of us.”
While crowds packed the opening weekend of the final show, an ironically celebratory production of The Wedding Singer, Ewen and others were breathing sighs of relief in announcing the organization would continue to raise the curtain on theatrical productions in Port Orchard.
The WWCA’s home-to-be at 626 Bay St. was once occupied by CrossFit NXNW. The smaller overall size will call for a bit of downsizing while changing the building’s interior layout. Yet it’s not the current state of the building anybody at the theater sees, but rather the potential.
“Of course there’s a lot of work to be done, turning a gym space into a theater,” music director Lesley Niemi said. “It’ll be hard, you know, with new places for new traditions, but what you carry on from the previous is crucial.”
The current theater at 521 Bay St. was certainly not a picture-perfect site for a theater either, Niemi said, recalling the “beer-stained” flooring that remained in the midst of the 2002 renovations to accommodate the shows of the WWCA, formerly First Onstage Productions.
Despite its imperfections and the added paint and tape splatters surrounding the same odd herringbone patterns, the theater had become a second home for many in the local theater scene.
To see it go will be an awful act to hold up for some like Katie Richardson, who met her husband Eric in a production of Into the Woods. “We had pictures at our wedding of Eric and I in Into the Woods where we first started to hang out and meet and stuff. It’s been a part of our story all along from the beginning.”
Some comfort lies within the WWCA’s ability to remain in Port Orchard. Richardson and Niemi both recalled the tragic disbanding of local theaters in Gig Harbor and Silverdale, all because a need to move could not be accompanied with a fitting facility. Months of waiting for positive news after the WWCA’s October announcement of a move had even Ewen considering the worst fate, but the show just had to go on.
“Staying downtown was definitely a huge draw,” Ewen said. “We’ve built our fan base here, and we love this community and wanted to continue to serve this city and the surrounding areas.”
Summer camps for the performances of A Year with Frog and Toad: Kids and Singin’ in the Rain Jr. are scheduled to be held at Bethel Grange after the conclusion of The Wedding Singer in mid-May.
