In 1997, Harlequin Productions Embarked
on an Impossible Dream...
...to raise $1.3M, purchase the boarded up State Theater, gut it, remodel it, and open the doors--all in just seventeen months. With the generous help of our audience
and friends, we resurrected the State Theater and created a new home for Harlequin Productions.
The resurrected State Theater included a new mural by Amanda Wilkening on the ceiling of the lobby, entitled "Phoenix" (partially pictured above). We opened to a sold-out-gala-grand opening celebration in November 1999, and all was ecstatic and terrifying.
In order to a complete the State Theater project in that brief time-span,our efforts focused only on those areas of the theater that the audience would actually see: the lobby, auditorium and restrooms. After six years of artistic success with no office space, absurdly limited dressing room space, a diminishingly effective heating/air conditioning system and an increasingly leaky roof, it was time for
"Freeing the Phoenix".
We set a goal of raising $1,000,000 in three years in order to make essential upgrades to the building and to retire the mortgage. It took nearly four years to complete the campaign, but we finished at $1,150,000 in May, 2009, after receiving the largest funding award in our history: $235,000 from the Washington State Local Community Projects fund. We wish to extend our deepest thanks to all of the individuals, businesses, corporations, foundations and government organizations that helped us reach our goal.
Read about what we've done.
Campaign Co-Chairs
Sandy Desner, Deskoba, Inc.
Denny Peterson, Vice President, Smith Barney
Don Rhodes, Chairman and CEO, Heritage Bank
Campaign Committee
Dan Weiss, Harlequin Board President; retired CFO of Illuminet
Scot Whitney, Managing Artistic Director
Aleena Schneider, Business Manager
Harlequin Board of Directors
President, Karen Halpern, South Sound Community College
Vice-President, Sally Coats, Washington State Attorney General Office
Treasurer, Neil Woody, McSwain & Company
Secretary, Sue W. Vickerman, Armour Vickerman, PLLC
Ralph Bietz, BioRev LLC
Mike Dexter, Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater Visitor & Convention Bureau
Bill Pope, William B. Pope & Associates
Larry Challain, Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters
Bill Cullen, Cullen & Palmer Law
Leslie Demich, The Demich Group
Robert 'Cris' Henry, Merril Lynch
Scott Oliver, Oliver Reconstruction
Gloria Strait, Smith-Barney
Linda Whitney, Artistic
Director
Scot Whitney, Managing Artistic Director
Dan Weiss, retired CFO of Illuminet
Ellen Wolfhagen, Consultant
Nancy LaPointe, Nancy J. LaPointe Financial Services
Special Advisor
Rick Panowicz
Campaign Sponsors
Tags Trophies
Mercato
Harlequin Productions is a professional, non-profit theater company offering a year-round season of classics, musicals, and new works. Founded in 1991, Harlequin owns the State Theater in downtown Olympia where it serves the South Sound region with its resident theater productions. Harlequin is dedicated to high quality theater productions that excite, challenge and enrich theater artists and audiences alike.
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