Mendocino Theatre Company

A weathered stage building, a field of yellow flowers, and a little sign on the railing are enough to remind me that Mendocino's history is not only in old houses and storefronts. Some of it is still being performed.

Overview

Mendocino Theatre Company occupies the Helen Schoeni Theatre on the Mendocino Art Center campus, where community theater has been part of Mendocino's creative life for generations.

The company traces its formal beginning to 1976 and its first season to 1977. Today it performs in the renovated 60-seat Helen Schoeni Theatre, an intimate black-box theater that has hosted hundreds of productions. Mendocino Theatre Company currently counts 282 productions since its founding.

The little theater represents more than one organization. Its story is tied directly to the growth of the Mendocino Art Center and to the artists, actors, directors, builders and volunteers who helped transform Mendocino into an arts community during the second half of the twentieth century.

Location

Mendocino Theatre Company is located at 45200 Little Lake Street, at the northeast corner of the Mendocino Art Center campus, just beyond the intersection of Little Lake and Kasten streets.

The theater is surrounded by the Art Center's studios, galleries, gardens and other buildings, making it part of a larger arts campus rather than a stand-alone commercial theater.

History

The story actually begins before there was a Mendocino Theatre Company.

In the early 1960s, local theater people were already staging productions at the Mendocino Art Center in Nichols Gallery. Conditions were basic. There were no proper dressing rooms, little storage, and no permanent stage facilities. Actors, sets, costumes and props were assembled wherever space could be found.

That early theater activity was part of the larger artistic movement taking shape around the Mendocino Art Center under its founder, Bill Zacha.

Zacha had come to Mendocino in the late 1950s with the idea of creating an arts center in a village whose traditional logging and fishing economy was changing. Theater became one piece of that vision.

In 1972, Zacha built what became the Helen Schoeni Theatre on the Art Center grounds.

The building was originally intended as a children's theater. It was simple by professional theater standards, without the wings, fly space and other features found in larger theaters, but for Mendocino's performers it provided something they had not previously enjoyed - a stage of their own.

The present theater company came together a few years later.

With the arrival of Don Murray, who brought professional theater experience to the coast, the local group was encouraged to formally organize. It became the Mendocino Performing Arts Company, later renamed the Mendocino Theatre Company. MTC identifies 1976 as the year of its founding.

Its first season followed in 1977. The first production was Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit, directed by Don Murray. That first year also included You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running and George Bernard Shaw's Candida.

From those beginnings, the little building became one of Mendocino's enduring cultural gathering places.

Actors who might never otherwise have stepped onto a stage found parts there. Local residents designed sets, made costumes, built scenery, handled lighting, directed productions and filled the seats. The theater also became a place where experienced performers and directors could work alongside people just discovering live theater.

That mixture of professional experience and community participation became one of the company's defining characteristics.

The Building Today

The Helen Schoeni Theatre has continued to evolve along with the company. The building has been renovated, and Mendocino Theatre Company now describes it as an intimate 60-seat black-box theater.

Its use has also expanded beyond traditional plays. MTC presents concerts by local and regional musicians and performers, and it has produced radio plays for broadcast on local stations KZYX and KNYO.

The company's production record shows just how much activity has taken place inside this modest building. Its official history now counts 282 productions since the company was founded, while its production archive documents seasons stretching from 1977 into the present day.

Why It Matters

That makes the Mendocino Theatre Company building a different sort of historic property.

Its importance is not primarily about nineteenth-century architecture or an old storefront name painted on a wall. The building became historic because of what people kept doing inside it.

For more than half a century, somebody has been rehearsing a line, building a set, adjusting a light, sewing a costume, opening a curtain or sitting in the audience waiting for the room to go dark.

The performances change. The little theater remains.

Timeline

Early 1960s - Local theater productions are staged at the Mendocino Art Center in Nichols Gallery.

1972 - Bill Zacha builds what becomes the Helen Schoeni Theatre, originally intended as a children's theater.

1976 - The Mendocino Performing Arts Company, later the Mendocino Theatre Company, is founded.

1977 - The first season opens with The Visit, directed by Don Murray.

Present - The renovated 60-seat black-box theater has hosted 282 productions.

Sources & Original Research: This history blends verifiable historical records with the original Buildings and Businesses in Mendocino post and additional research. Sources include Mendocino Theatre Company's official History, Production History and Getting Here pages; historical accounts of the company and the Helen Schoeni Theatre published by Real Estate Magazine, including recollections from early participants in Mendocino theater; Mendocino Art Center historical context; and original post text and photograph provided by Gee Bee.