The Glen Arbor Players (GAP) are changing lodgings and going old school. Its new home is the nearly 100-year-old Leelanau School in Glen Arbor. GAP commences its 2025 season next month on the stage of the school’s auditorium, eager to perform a run of thoughtfully chosen plays in a setting made for just that purpose. The staff and students at the Leelanau School are also eager to meet their own good fortune as they anticipate improvements to the auditorium.
In 2016, GAP moved from the Glen Arbor Arts Center to the Glen Lake Community Church and performed plays on the fellowship room stage. It was a good home where the actors, directors, and stagehands felt welcome.
Pastor Steve Rusticus, Amy Smith, and Dale DeJager accommodated, and the audiences applauded. Then in summer of 2024, when the Leelanau School invited GAP to be its resident theater troupe, GAP accepted for a chance to perform in a real theater with all that comes with it. This isn’t the first time GAP actors have performed on the school’s stage. In 2018, they presented Priscilla Cogan’s “The Summer Cottage” to an appreciative audience. This time, though, they’re back to stay. With gratitude and in friendship, GAP leaves its church home of nine years for a new one.
Inviting GAP to be the theater troupe is part of the Leelanau School’s campaign to boost its community presence and connections and to make overdue improvements in the auditorium. Rob Hansen, Head of School, has pointed out that a well-kept secret is not a good business plan. It’s time to move in a new direction, to let their neighbors know about them, to share assets, and to make the school’s auditorium a place that community groups want to use. The school, coming up on its centennial, was founded in 1929.
The auditorium was built in 1953 as part of the first structure at the school’s current location. Kate Olson, Director of Alumni and Development, believes the last technology updates to the auditorium happened in the mid-1980s; some paint, carpeting, and task lighting upgrades were in 2008. Their plans to bring the auditorium up to 2025 standards include new seating, flooring, and curtains; updated lights, sound, and electrical systems; and improved technology, which would, for example, provide webcast capacity for local business and groups to make presentations. Space for wheelchairs, companion seating, and a new sound and light board will reduce seating a bit but still leave 130 seats.
Outside the auditorium, the school has plans for sidewalk access, beautification, lighting for guests approaching the building, and golf cart shuttles. Olson says the total projected cost is $360,000, with $170,000 – $180,000 to update all the auditorium’s technical, sound, lighting, and electrical systems. The school is applying for grants and asking for individual donations. Thus far, alumni and local friends have supported the project with $31,000, including gifts to hire consultants, purchase gentlyused equipment from the former Parallel 45 Theater Company, and update the projector – all to help realize a worthy goal for the school’s neighbors and community.
The school has reached out to other community groups too, confident that the planned improvements will attract them. It looks forward to future collaborations with the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Glen Arbor Arts Center, the League of Women Voters, the Leelanau Historical Society, and the International Affairs Forum. Bringing GAP to the school benefits the students too. Olson sees them being stagehands and actors, learning to make costumes, and even using the school’s new woodworking shop to construct sets. The troupe hopes the students are a built-in audience that will enjoy having a resident theater company. Olson is sincere when she says the Leelanau School loves Glen Arbor and wants to offer its young people, as well as the community in general, cultural opportunities close to home.
GAP is so enthusiastic about the invitation from the Leelanau School that it doesn’t need to wait for the improvements. It’s ready to get started in its new digs. GAP members visited the school recently to start planning lights, sound, and staging for the season’s first play, Michelle Kholos Brooks and Kelly Younger’s Kalamazoo, a funny, tender story of two widowed seniors venturing into the risky world of online dating for a second chance at love. Please go to GAP’s website www.glenarborplayers. org or GAP’s Facebook page for details.
