Theatre Cedar Rapids is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month with a look back as well as a step forward.
The community theater announced a $9.5 million renovation of its longtime downtown home and debuted a new exhibit at the History Center.
The exhibit, curated by History Center collections manager Tara Templeman, traces the theater's roots back to 1925, when Iowa artist Grant Wood and a group of friends staged their first production, Cardboard Moon, in his small Cedar Rapids studio in a carriage house at 5 Turner Alley.
The center didn't have to travel far to locate the theater's origins — the mansion that houses the History Center was once owned by the Turners, who, upon converting the building into a funeral home in 1924, gave Wood the carriage house for free while he taught at the Cedar Rapids Community School District. In turn, he painted for the family as their interior decorator.
"He ended up moving in there and then living there, and that's where he painted American Gothic, so he did some of his best work right in that building," Templeman said. "But it's also where the very first production of Theater Cedar Rapids ever took place."
Wood, along with his creative partner, Marvin Cone, would continue performances and backdrops until World War II temporarily paused performances by “The Community Players."
TCR's centennial comes as many of Wood’s works and projects near their own 100-year anniversaries. Evidence of his interior design work, painted on commission for a sleeping porch in Cedar Rapids, was recently celebrated. His seven-panel mural Corn Room, which is currently undergoing conservation, will turn 100 next year. American Gothic reaches its centennial in 2030.
The exhibit at the History Center was planned over the past year. Theatre Cedar Rapids gave the center access to its archives, made up of nearly 10,000 photos, programs, documents and production pieces. Roughly 150 items were chosen for display in the exhibit, which opened Aug. 23 and will remain on view for six months.
Templeman said the display was designed to be hands-on, with a small stage and props from past shows made accessible to visitors to touch. All aspects of the theater are represented, from sound and lighting equipment to posters, set pieces, costumes, scrapbooks and programs to highlight the theater’s rich history, though many physical artifacts from the theater's earlier years were destroyed in the 2008 flood.
“All of the costumes are post-2008 because everything was destroyed in the flood,” she said. “A large portion of what they were storing was destroyed, which is the case for many people. I mean, storing things in a basement is a great idea until the whole city floods.”
Instead, the exhibit features standout costumes from recent productions, including a multicolored coat from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the Chrysler Building dress from The Producers and pieces from Beauty and the Beast. It fills in the blanks with news clippings from the past.
Theatre Cedar Rapids changed names and venues several times over the decades, ultimately adopting its current name in 1983 and relocating to the Iowa Theatre Building. Today, it is Iowa’s largest nonprofit producing theater, with a five-story, 50,000-square-foot home at the corner of First Avenue and Third Street.
Templeman said the centennial shows not just the endurance of one organization, but of Cedar Rapids’ cultural life.
“There's just, for the size of our community, a love of arts and culture, and I didn't realize how far back that goes, or that the story would be related to someone like Grant Wood, who you think of as being a painter," she said. "It's just incredible, the amount of community support required to keep a community theater alive for 100 years, and that has just been a part of Cedar Rapids from the beginning."
