Whidbey Playhouse in Oak Harbor Celebrates 60 Years of Community Theatre

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the Whidbey Playhouse in Oak Harbor is staging a fundraiser gala to support building repairs that members say cannot wait. Theresa Frazer, pictured with other volunteers, said, "We're hoping to raise a lot of money to fund some of those projects," Frazer said. "Cause the building's gonna fall down around us if we don't repair it." Tickets for the fundraiser gala are available through the playhouse's website.

Photo documentation of the playhouse community shows volunteers and longtime participants gathered for the anniversary coverage. From left are Kevin Meyer, Eric George, Rusty Hendrix, Bob Hendrix, Theresa Frazer, Susie Thompson and Jim Riney, photographed by Marina Blatt. "Despite all of its ups and downs, today the playhouse is a light among the community: hosting more than five shows a year, classes for kids and adults, and playing the role of a second home for those who are part of it," the article notes when describing current programming.

The theater's origin story underlines how grassroots the operation remains even as it marks six decades. "What began as a few productions staged in a high‑school cafeteria has grown into a volunteer‑powered cultural institution with six decades of community theatre behind it," the reporting states, and Susie Thompson recalled that the playhouse’s first productions were staged in an old high school cafeteria that has since been torn down. In the earliest days audiences gathered to watch melodramas such as "Deadwood Dick," and Thompson has been attending performances and acting since the 1960s.

Volunteers continue to carry the playhouse's operations while organizers plan both repairs and programming. The organization is explicitly described as a volunteer‑powered cultural institution, and the theater still produces more than five shows a year while offering classes for kids and adults. "Six decades after its first curtain call in a high school cafeteria, the theater continues to adapt, endure and gather its community members beneath the stage lights," the piece concludes, emphasizing continuity even as the facility ages.

Fundraising is now central to that continuity. Frazer's appeal frames the gala as more than a celebration: it is a campaign to fund unspecified projects and structural work she regards as urgent. The playhouse's combination of steady programming and an aging building puts immediate pressure on volunteers to convert anniversary goodwill into secured repairs and renewed capacity for classes and productions.