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| Celebrating 75 years of service to southeastern Iowa, The Players' Workshop is said to be the second oldest community theatre west of the Mississippi River. As early as 1922, local efforts to bring live theatre to Burlington began making appearances in the pages of the local newspapers and on 30 November of 1927, The Drama League opened its doors to the public. The building was the former carriage house of the late Col H.B. Scott and, although the structure is much changed from the building you see at the right, the location remains the same. While valiant, The Drama League's efforts floundered until 1932, when the Women's Bureau of the Chamber of Commerce organized a department of drama, chaired by Mrs. Barbara Davidson, and threw the city's support behind the group. |  |
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By the following winter, the group began taking root in firmer soil and on March 1, 1933, adopted our present-day name, The Players' Workshop. As "the little theatre on Grove street" became more self-supporting, the City's department of drama began a gradual withdrawal of their sponsorship. On March 23, 1934, the Workshop took its first play to the Iowa City festival of plays. Two of the three actors, David Brown and Yvonne Eland, earned Superior Acting awards. The third actor, Lloyd W. Maffitt, who played the role of God, received none, but in his own words, "I suppose the judges figured portraying the Deity was honor enough for anyone." That same summer, under the direction of an outside production company, the group made a movie, "Runnin' Wild", a classic cops & robbers picture that was shown at the old Avon Theater. |
On September 8, 1934, the Players' Workshop took to the air, presenting "It's a Trick," by Walter Stone, over the radio station at Carthage, Il. The carriage house and its adjacent grounds were left to the city in the Scotts' will. The city felt it couldn't afford the gift and negotiated with the Players' Workshop for a cooperative agreement. The building was turned over to the care and improvement of the Workshop, but the property is still officially owned by the city. Over the years, the group continued a regimen of both stage and aired performances. As the group could not afford to pay for scripts, it used original material written by Marianne Prugh, Majorie Coulter, Bob Glenn, Dick Keupper, Ted Hammer and Walter Stone. Then, we took a major step on January 24th and 25th with the production of "Tommy," our first full-length play. According to Gene Champagne, "The 153 people who braved sub-zero to see the Players Workshop production at the playhouse last night found it well worth while..." As of October 1st, 1950, spurred by an incident of boys-being-boys and falling off the Workshop's roof, the Workshop incorporated. Fortunately, the boy was okay and the parents did not sue, and we now have our current structure. |
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Over the years, the Workshop has undergone many transformations. The old carriage house was razed and rebuilt in 1961, and is now the modern structure you see to the left. Over the years, the Workshop had been forced to shut down three times. The first was during World War II, when a shortage of men forced us to close down. The second occasion was on December 10th, 1953, when the Workshop had to cancel a performance because the furnace grates had collapsed. The third occurred this very season when ice storms knocked out city power (and consequently lights anf furnaces) for a few days. This has been but a smattering of a long and fascinating history of the workshop, paraphrased and quoted from a speech by Lloyd W. Maffitt for the Des Moines County Historical Society on February 18th, 1992. In that speech, he credits Barbara Davidson, the Workshop's first president, and the public library's theatre file as his own sources. We honor the efforts of members past, present and future, and hope to continue to provide our services to southeastern Iowa for another 75 years and more... |
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