| During the 40‘s and 50‘s, Huntsville Little Theater was accustomed to doing a children’s show on occasion. Then, they discontinued that practice. As a result, a group of concerned citizens, recognizing the possibility of a dedicated theater effort devoted to children and youths, decided to take action. It was fifty years ago, in July 1961, that they met in the living room of Jo Linger’s house and organized what became Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater. |
The Articles of Incorporation, dated 8 September, 1961 listed the 18 Incorporators and Members of the Board;
| Mrs. Donald Linger | Wilfred R. Van Valkenburgh |
| Mrs. L.K. Wood | Wayne Lacy |
| Mrs. Wayne Lacy | Donald Linger |
| Tom Melton | Jim Burns |
| George Robinson | Mrs. George Robinson |
| Mrs Robert L. Body | Ben Wilcoxon |
| Mrs. Ben Wilcoxon | Mrs. Coleman J. Goetz |
| Leonard Flank | Mrs. Leonard Flank |
| Maury Gerson | Mrs. M. M. Hallum |
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At that first meeting, Eleanor Wood was elected President, Wayne Lacy, Vice President and Nancy Lacy Secretary-Treasurer.
Mr. Van Valkenburgh located space in an old warehouse store room on the third floor of Cotton Row on the west side of the square which became Fantasy’s home for almost three years.
In order to generate funds for their first season, the group presented an adult show, “Bell, Book and Candle” on August 18, 1961. With this financial backlog, the first season of children’s shows began with “The Pied Piper if Hamelin” at the end of September.
At Christmas time “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” entertained children and grown ups alike.
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Shortly after Christmas, several women formed a trouping unit of Fantasy. (Similar to today’s Fantasy Players) They did a dress rehearsal of their show, “Bumble’s Folly” at a regular Board meeting and then “took it on the Road”. In all, “Bumble’s Folly was performed at eight different city or county schools and then was presented in living black and white on Johnny Evan’s local television program.
In April of 1962 Fantasy completed it’s first season of Children’s plays with “Tom Sawyer”.
The second season started with the summer benefit show, “The Teahouse of the August Moon”. The children’s season began with “Heidi”, directed, fittingly enough, by Heidi Medenica, followed by “A Christmas Carol” (not, of course, the one that Fantasy currently produces) and closing out the second season a musical, “The Strange Case of Mother Goose”
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Fantasy’s Third season, once again started with an adult fund raiser, “The Road To Rome” followed by “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, Beauty and the Beast” and “Jack and the Beanstalk”.
Just prior to “Jack”, Fantasy relocated to the Temporary Civic Arts Center on Clinton Avenue. It was the old Clinton Avenue School building and eventually housed no only Fantasy but Huntsville Little Theater, Huntsville Community Ballet, The Arts Council, Huntsville Community Chorus and Huntsville Art League. All of us packaged in one small building. But, there was a great deal of serendipity with the arrangement. A great feeling of community existed and organizations interchanged ideas, personnel and equipment. The School auditorium was our presentation venue and Huntsville Little Theater renovated it into a lovely theater.
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Fantasy was able to stay in the Temporary Civic Arts Center until 1974 when the building was demolished in preparation for the construction of the von Braun Civic Center. Fantasy, along with the Ballet moved into the old Rison School building in northeast Huntsville. Then an I 565 Interchange forced another move. This time Fantasy occupied a small building at 221 White Street right across from what is now the Mertz Center. Fantasy renovated the building, stored material and props in the basement and hung out a sign on the front identifying our presence. But, once again, we were forced to move. The School Board decided that the property was too valuable to them to let us keep it.
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During all of these moves, Fantasy continued to present full seasons of Children’s plays. Regardless of the difficulties in building sets, making costumes, rehearsing, Fantasy alway found a way to get a show together and put it on. With the demise of the Temporary Civic Arts Center, Fantasy moved their productions to Huntsville High School where the stage was much larger and had much better wings and flies.
After eviction from 221 White street, Fantasy, along with the Ballet, were housed in Council School on St Claire Avenue. Councill school was very large. The Ballet took over the Gymnasium, laid down a dance floor and went into full operation. Fantasy and the newly formed Twickenham Repertory Company used the cafeteria as their rehearsal halls with Twickenham also occasionally presenting there.
Councill had many problems including leaking roofs, vermin, occasional breakins, etc.
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Then on March 14, 1975, the VBCC opened with a gala Beaux Arts Ball. Most of the performing arts organizations quickly moved into this new facility - but only to perform, there was no room for residency.
Fantasy was permitted to store materials in a Butler type building behind the architects offices on Clinton while staying in Councill and performing in the VBCC.
The old Davis Cabinet Works building at 2113 Holmes Avenue came up for sale and Fantasy took a deep breath and purchased the building. It became our scene shop and over the years has become a very efficient facility - air conditioned, sawdust removal system, good storage and well equipped. Our original purchase was financed through a Nashville Bank, but LeRoy McClay was able to arrange for the Huntsville Community Development Organization to pick up the Mortgage at no interest with the result that Fantasy now owns the building outright.
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Things went along relatively smoothly for Fantasy until the mid nineties when life at Councill became even more difficult. An active search effort was initiated for a permanent home. Several potential sites were investigated but were turned down for any number of reasons.
Finally, one of our Board members advised of a property owned by a fellow church member that was up for sale. It was the former home of the Eagles on Long Avenue and Was quite a large facility. Upon examining the building, it was determined that it would suit Fantasy’s ends very well. We took a leap of faith and LeRoy McClay and John Miller started visiting banks to locate a lender. Eventually one of the vice presidents at First Commercial Bank agreed to provide our mortgage.
During the summer of 1997, LeRoy, John and Tom Morris spent every day in the facility tearing out the artifacts of the Eagles. Seven 20 cubic yard dumpsters were filled with the remains of a forty foot bar, dropped ceiling tiles, the kitchen tiles, various walls, etc. We had a plan for turning the Eagles ballroom into two rehearsal rooms, in converting the kitchen into a break room, redoing the bathrooms, building separate sewing and costume storage rooms and replacing all of the duct work which was saturated with tobacco stains.
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Simultaneously with the massive rework of the building, we put together a four year capital campaign plan to meet the expenses of the mortgage and the renovations. The plan consisted of preparing a presentation that described who we were, what we were trying to accomplish and how industry could help. We went to many local industries with our presentation and spent many hours soliciting funds. We were very successful. our Original building cost was $360,000. Our renovation cost was $181,000, our external expense (parking lot, landscaping, building externals) was $80,000. And this did not include the attendant interest. We received monetary assistance from both the State and the City and two weeks before the end of the four years, we were able to vaporize the mortgage. It wouldn’t have been magic to simply burn it.
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Now Fantasy has purchased the two building adjacent to our main facility at 3312 Long Avenue. The warehouse to the east is currently rented out and the property to the west has been converted to our Executive Director’s Office.
In it’s fifty years, Fantasy has grown from a small cadre of dedicated people determined to bring classic children’s theater to the young and young in heart of the Tennessee Valley to a large community theater with literally hundreds of volunteers, presenting four beautifully mounted shows each year, conducting dozens of classes in all aspects of theatrical arts to hundreds of children, providing Kindermusik® classes to infants, spreading Fantasy magic to schools, libraries, malls, conventions and the like through our Fantasy players and being a vibrant member of the Huntsville Arts Community.
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