Pickleville Playhouse

Pickleville Playhouse
Address	2049 South Bear Lake Blvd
City	Garden City, Utah
Country	United States
Architect	LeGrande and Betty Larsen
Owned by	Andrea Davis
Capacity	310
Type	Proscenium
Opened	1977
Years active	34 years
Website
www.picklevilleplayhouse.com

The Pickleville Playhouse is a musical theater located on the banks of Bear Lake in Garden City, Utah, United States. LeGrande and Betty Larsen founded the Playhouse following their vision of creating a family-friendly theater that would serve as a place to bring generations together.

When the Larsens moved to Driggs, Idaho where LeGrande began his practice as a physician, they discovered an old melodrama theater, Pierre's Playhouse, in nearby Victor, Idaho. Their love for performing grew and after moving to Logan, Utah in 1976, the Larsens were inspired to build their own melodrama theater.^[1]

The Pickleville Playhouse was named for the town in which it once resided, Pickelville. A short time after the construction of the Playhouse, the town Pickelville was annexed as part of Garden City.^[1]

Construction

Construction on the playhouse began in June 1977. Despite never having constructed a large building before, LeGrande and Betty Larsen, with the help of their six sons and one daughter, acquired as much help as they could from experts and did the rest on their own. They peeled white pine logs by hand and mixed concrete in wheelbarrows.^[2] The seats were brought from the old Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City which was undergoing renovation at the time. Because the Larsens weren't allowed to collect the seats until the workers at the Capitol had gone home, the family drove two hours in the middle of the night to the theater in Salt Lake, loaded up as many chairs as would fit in a truck, returned to Bear Lake, and repeated the process until all 320 chairs were moved. The original seats are still in use today.

The family constructed by day and rehearsed on the stage at night. There was no place for the cast and crew to stay, so they spent the nights in sleeping bags and tents. The Larsens had to work quickly as they were scheduled to open their first show in August, two-and-a-half months after construction began.^[1]

Adjacent to the theater is Bandito's Wild West Grill (formerly named The Pickleville Pavilion), which offers a western-style cookout.

Growth and Expansion

In the theater's early days, the Larsen family and the actors they recruited enjoyed performing despite the small numbers of people in the audience. They began to wonder what to do with the back half of the theater since the seats were never filled. However, as the theater's reputation grew, so, too, did the audiences. The Playhouse now performs for sold-out audiences from mid-June to early September with up to 10 showings per week. Pickleville has expanded its repertoire of summer melodramas to include favorite Broadway shows and, in December, takes its cast to Logan, Utah where they perform an original Pickleville Christmas production.

Management

LeGrande and Betty Larsen gradually transitioned ownership of the theater and its operations to their youngest child (and only daughter), Andrea Larsen Davis. After a childhood spent at the theater and years of dedicated study, Andrea’s oldest son, T.J. Davis, joined her as a full-time partner and writer for the Playhouse. T.J. now writes both script and score for both the summer melodramas and the annual Christmas shows.

Juanito Bandito

The Playhouse has gained local notability in recent years for the creation of a character, Juanito Bandito, an "unabashed, Spanglish-speaking, likeable crook".^[3] Both created and played by T.J. Davis, Juanito Bandito appeared first in Chuck Wagon's Wild West Showdown in the summer of 2008 at the Pickleville Playhouse. The character became the subject of the next three consecutive summers' shows-- The Hanging of El Bandito (2009), Bandito Rides Again (2010), and Who Shot Juanito Bandito? (2011), all of which were written by T.J. Davis.

Performances

In August 1977, the Playhouse performed its first melodrama, The Faithful Footman.^[1] Currently, they perform two shows each summer, one melodrama, and one Broadway show.

References

External links

• Pickleville Playhouse Homepage
• www.juanitobandito.com

Coordinates: 41°54′34″N 111°23′23″W / 41.90944°N 111.38972°W / 41.90944; -111.38972