Our History
The year is 2003 when Cedarcrest High School student Ashley Dowden, serving as a Youth Commissioner on the Duvall Cultural Commission (DCC), decides to start an after school drama club as her Senior Project. Ian King (also a Commission member) agrees to be her mentor and together they create “Cheetah Theatah”, teaching acting, stage management and technical theatre to elementary students throughout the Snoqualmie Valley.
The following year the drama club's name was changed to Riverview Drama, and it was established as an ongoing DCC program. In the 2004 season Chuck Young joined Ashley and Ian, and together they began to make plans for the future.
Chuck started a middle school program in 2005, and Stuart Lisk took the lead with the elementary program. 2005 was also when Chuck began the effort to establish Cascade Community Theatre in affiliation with the Cascade Arts & Culture Council* (CACC), (formerly known as Cascade Performing Arts Council), a non-profit umbrella organization for local performing arts groups.
Fast forward to September of 2007 and you find Chuck, Stuart, Wendy Habek, Gina Humberstone and a group of naïve but ambitious and determined volunteers meeting to launch a real community theatre for all ages. The first community production “An Ideal Husband” came to life in December 2007 and was followed in March of 2008 by “The Odd Couple”.
Our history is a story of vision and hard working volunteers, and our future is limited only by our imagination and energy. As you read this, amazing things are happening. We take tremendous pride in the level of entertainment we bring to the Snoqualmie Valley and strive to make every production even better than the last.
*Cascade Arts & Culture Council is a tax-exempt organization described within section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code.