The Okoboji Summer Theatre
tales
from the
iowa great
lakes
Before the curtain went up at the Okoboji Summer Theatre, there was an airport.
The airplane hangar that generations of summer theatre-goers know as home to the Okoboji Summer Theatre was built by the Works Progress Administration in 1935, part of a Depression-era effort to expand public airports across Iowa.
For years, planes landed on the grass just outside. Then, in the late 1950s, a group of scrappy artists from Stephens College saw something different in those curved walls and open space.
Walk through the images of this incredible theatre’s history — the old billboard being changed by hand on a ladder, the dressing room with its bare bulbs and peeling paint, the parking lot packed on a summer night — and you'll start to get a sense of what it took to build something that has lasted generations.
episode info
Before the curtain went up at the Okoboji Summer Theatre, there was an airport.
The airplane hangar that generations of summer theatre-goers know as home to the Okoboji Summer Theatre was built by the Works Progress Administration in 1935, part of a Depression-era effort to expand public airports across Iowa.
For years, planes landed on the grass just outside. Then, in the late 1950s, a group of scrappy artists from Stephens College saw something different in those curved walls and open space.
Walk through the images of this incredible theatre’s history — the old billboard being changed by hand on a ladder, the dressing room with its bare bulbs and peeling paint, the parking lot packed on a summer night — and you'll start to get a sense of what it took to build something that has lasted generations.
episode info
