Conejo Players and ‘Annie’ Open Remodeled Theater

The Conejo Players have celebrated a milestone in their 32-year history: A performance of “Annie” on Nov. 3 initiated their newly expanded facility.

The $200,000 addition is the culmination of a two-phase remodeling program that began in 1982, when 62 seats were added to increase audience capacity from 126 to 188.

Phase two has added 2,400 square feet, expanding dressing rooms, costume storage space and areas for set construction and rehearsals.

“It’s been a long journey,” said Francine Markow, president of the Conejo Players board of directors, who has acted in and directed recent productions.

The journey began in spring of 1957 in a Lake Sherwood living room, where 10 people felt that the Conejo Valley (then an area with fewer than 5,000 people) needed a community theater. They each contributed $5 and founded the Players. Their first production, the comedy “Nude With Pineapple,” was presented to an audience of 35 people on folding chairs in an old dairy barn.

When an old movie house became a bowling alley, the Players bought 76 theater seats and installed them in the barn. In 1964, with the cooperation of the Janss Corp., which developed the Conejo Valley, they completed the construction of their playhouse on land leased from the city for 99 years. An $18,000, interest-free mortgage was paid in full in 1974.

The expansion will bring not only artistic but financial benefits, since plays’ runs can be extended. Dick Johnson, the Players’ executive director, said, “The backstage addition will let us run musicals for seven weeks and other plays for six, since the props and sets can be built during production time--something we were unable to do before.”

An executive producer for station KHJ-TV and the winner of six Emmys for public affairs shows, Johnson has been active in the Players for more than 20 years and sees the association as “an outlet for the creative juices.”

Herman Detering, the Players’ treasurer--a retired Rocketdyne engineer who got hooked on the Players in 1959 when he helped the technical crew solve a wiring problem--said, “It almost becomes a second family.”

Betsy Henke, the Players’ executive technical director and a computer operator at Hughes Aircraft, said, “My daughter, who is 13, grew up with the Players. She was 2 when I began to work with them.” Henke got involved with the theater when her then-husband was an actor there. She smiled as she said, “When we divorced, I got custody of the Conejo Players.”