OUR HISTORY
By Ellis E. Conklin
Sometimes it is judicious to look back on something, ponder its modest roots, and celebrate the upward journey, before moving forward.
Riverbend Players Community Theater began over scones and coffee some 20 years ago at Jane Knapp’s dining-room table in Wheeler and next month will spread its wings when the curtain rises at the North County Recreation District’s Performing Arts Center for Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs.
As the iconic marketing message for Virginia Slims cigarettes once enthused: “You’ve come a long way, baby!”
“I remember long ago that Ron Cohen, a fitness club member, asked if we couldn’t do a play or have a reading group – anything,” recounts Knapp, who, for the past 17 years has served as activities director at NCRD.
The name Riverbend Players, adds Knapp, came courtesy of Phyllis Sanderson, a New York actress and a one-time mainstay at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, who had moved to the area to teach.
The very first performances, remembers Linda Makohon, a Friends of NCRD and Riverbend Players board member, were held inside the current Fireside Room, previously known as the Riverbend Room.
In essence, Riverbend Players began as Readers Theater, where a rag-tag assemblage of actors performed without props or costumes, often sans stage or set!
The very first show, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, was a collection of short free-verse poems, many composed in 1915, that shatter the myth that small-town America is a vast depository of virtue.
Spoon River’s director was Ms. Sanderson, and Jane Knapp, her memories of early Riverbend Players lore deeply engraved, can still recall the wondrous Readers Theater performances of actress Jaye O’Neal, a ginger-haired spitfire.
Knapp says 40 chairs were arranged in the Fireside Room to accommodate the earliest
theatergoers. Sometimes the room was crammed with as many as 75 to 80 chairs. “We were over fire code at times,” she says with a chuckle. “We did Robert Service poems, Dorothy Parker readings, and Mr. Barry’s Etchings.”
THE PRESENT-DAY 193-seat theater, marvels Knapp, once served as the old auditorium for the rambunctious kids at Nehalem Elementary School. “When we started [Riverbend Players] it was still a theater, but it had become a junk room. Truck after truck had to come to remove the stuff. We borrowed lights from Coaster Theatre, and the curtain was a hand-me-down.”
It was Tom Cocklin, current board president of Riverbend Players, who in 2016 “encouraged us to organize ourselves as a non-profit,” says Makohon.
After nearly $200,000 worth of work: new lighting, padded seats, railing, and a remodeled stage, the theater now has a classic, regal feel. “It went from a really uncomfortable place to becoming a fantastic venue,” says Cocklin.
Riverbend Players’ inaugural production at the revamped theater, in 2016, was Neil Simon’s comedic classic, The Odd Couple.
With nearly a decade of stage productions under its belt and a fully remodeled facility at the recreation center in Nehalem, Riverbend Players has hit its stride.
Through 2022, the community theater group has staged 48 productions, with 17 different directors. This past year Riverbend Players broke many attendance records including in December with the Frank Squillo-directed It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play.
Its original base of volunteers has surged from five to nearly 40. The group also has a contract with NCRD to house its theater troupe, and patrons now have the ability to purchase tickets and select their seats online.
