Photograph by Carrie Jensen
April Halberstadt, curator at the Saratoga Historical Museum, reviews the exhibit devoted to the city's long support of theater and drama.
Historical museum salutes decades of drama
By Shari Kaplan
Drama through the decades--specifically, from the 1930s to the present--is the focus of the latest exhibit to fill the Saratoga Historical Museum, an unassuming building set back among the oaks at 20450 Saratoga-Los Gatos Road.
On display through at least the end of January, according to museum chairwoman Lynn Johnston, the exhibit uses old photographs, playbills and programs to showcase the histories of Theatre of the Glade, Valley Institute of Theater Arts and the Saratoga Drama Group.
"It came about because, as far as I know, we've never had an exhibit like this in the museum," Johnston, a Saratoga resident, says of the exhibit. "I knew we couldn't cover all the community theater that's been in Saratoga, so I tried to give the highlights of some of the groups that have flourished here."
A favorite of old-timers, Theatre of the Glade was founded in 1933 by Dorothea Johnston (no relation to Lynn Johnston), thanks to encouragement from Dorothea's mother Elizabeth Johnston, who owned the Saratoga Inn.
Not to be confused with present-day The Inn at Saratoga, the old Saratoga Inn was on Saratoga Avenue across from the current Village Post Office. Its property comprised plenty of trees, due in part to nearby Saratoga Creek. The area provided a sylvan backdrop for the group's nine years of productions, which ended in 1941 with Distant Drums.
A particularly famous face in the museum's photographs is that of Olivia de Havilland, who performed in several Theatre of the Glade roles, including Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her mother, Lilian Fontaine, also performed with the group, as evidenced by a publicity shot for The Merry Wives of Windsor which includes Fontaine, Dorothea Johnston and Frederick Stover, another local actor.
The Valley Institute of Theater Arts, commonly called VITA, was begun in 1975 by former Saratoga High School teacher Judith Lyn Sutton and actor Bill Peck, son of longtime Saratogans Willys and Betty Peck. Among the photographs of Peck is one of him playing opposite a young Annette Bening in Romeo and Juliet. Bening once lived in the area; her brother Brad and his family are Los Gatans.
VITA, which concentrated on classical theater and Shakespeare, was a conservatory of both amateurs and professionals. Performances, which ran through 1990, took place at several local venues, including Sanborn-Skyline County Park, the former Paul Masson Mountain Winery and the Saratoga Civic Theatre.
Overlapping with VITA was the Saratoga Federated Drama Group, which began in 1963 under the auspices of the Saratoga Federated Church, at 14370 Saratoga Avenue.
"The first plays were those that would be appropriate coming from a church-based group," says Saratogan Doug Anderson, who spent many years doing set design and construction for the group. Around 1970, he says, the group outgrew the church. It also dropped the "federated" part of its name.
The group now produces three musicals each year, from classics like The Sound of Music, Brigadoon and Oklahoma, to more playful productions like Once Upon a Mattress and Li'l Abner. All of its performances are at the Saratoga Civic Theatre, which it shares with another local group, the West Valley Light Opera Association.
Why did theater become such an important and enduring part of what was--and basically still is--a small bedroom community? "A rich cultural past begets a rich cultural future," Lynn Johnston says.
The Saratoga Historical Museum is open Friday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 408.867.4311.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
