Weathervane Playhouse is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. And with nine decades comes a lot of paper work, from Playbills and photographs to newsletters and promotional posters.
“So many,” said Mat Cruz when asked how many boxes contain Weathervane’s paper ephemera. “There’s boxes upon boxes of photographs. There’s plenty of loose photographs as well. … There’s at least 10 just solid boxes that weigh at least 50 pounds.”
For several semesters, Cruz worked to digitally catalog the community theater’s archive while attending the University of Akron. The archive dates from Weathervane’s early years — it was founded in 1935 — through 2000. Over the decades, the theater, which now calls Merriman Valley home, has produced more than 800 plays and musicals with support from countless volunteers.
Cruz recently finished the monumental project, just ahead of his May graduation. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in English in a five-year joint degree program.
Weathervane Playhouse donated its archives to the university more than a decade ago, said Kevin Lambes, the theater’s executive director. The idea to digitize it originated from the theater’s former board president, Bill Kist. When Kist learned that his uncle, Richard Levering, starred in several Weathervane productions in the ’40s, he began searching the theater’s archives for mentions of his uncle.
Kist said he discovered his uncle participated in six Weathervane productions and went on to try to become a professional actor in Los Angeles.
“Alas, [it] did not work out for him,” Kist said, “but he ended up actually going into the Air Force for 20 years and raised a family.”
Fortunately, Kist knew the general timeframe of his uncle’s volunteerism with Weathervane, which helped him narrow down which archival boxes to search. But with no digital catalog to assist him, he had to sort through lots of material.
Creating an archive that’s accessible to all
Kist ended up sharing his archives experience with students in professor Hillary Nunn’s spring 2023 interdisciplinary class, Acting Like a Hower, at the University of Akron.
One of those students was Cruz.
A self-described theater nerd, Cruz said his main goal with the Weathervane archive was to make it more accessible.
Before he began his work, people who wanted to view Weathervane’s archive had to make an appointment with the University of Akron Archives and Special Collections. Then they had to set aside time to visit the archives and, like Kist, rummage through boxes to find what they needed.
“I want anyone who had a loved one who performed in these plays to not be limited,” Cruz said. “So if someone, you know, their grandfather passes, and they know he did a lot of work with the Weathervane, I want them to be able to just search his name and find, ‘Oh, here’s all the Playbills he was in.’”
When he searched the archive, Lambes was struck by how little has changed when it comes to the details of running a theater company.
“You read a program from the ’40s, and they’re talking about the same sort of things. What does this theater need? They need people to volunteer. They need donations. They need audience members. Those same things that we talk about all the time too,” he said.
Mapping local and national history through Weathervane’s archive
For Kist, the archive illustrates the importance of community theater to a community.
“We care about our past. We are preserving our past,” he said. “We have several people that worked at Weathervane before they went on to professional careers. But we also are valuing the people, I think, by virtue of this project that did not become stars and did not work professionally, but yet gave years and years of their lives to producing live theater.”
Lambes said Weathervane will continue to add material to the archive. Currently, the theater is working on creative a page on its website to house the information. This will be in addition to the University of Akron’s digital archive. On June 7, Weathervane will host a benefit to raise funds for the archival project.
Cruz credits the project for giving him “a new appreciation for what community theater can represent.” Throughout his work, he noticed how the topics and events of the time affected Weathervane.
In the 1940s, the theater did away with coffee after shows because it was rationed during World War II. In the 1970s, the theater began to produce more political and risque shows, he said. From its founding, Weathervane Playhouse was desegregated, and in its early days it featured performances from the Dumas Players, a troupe of Black actors.
“It’s not just a fun pastime; it’s not just entertainment,” Cruz said. “It is a reflection of the community, and it is a reflection of the arts.”