PORT TOWNSEND — Centrum volunteers and Fort Worden State Park employees took a bow this week for their roles in transforming the green room at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater.
One difference: It’s not green anymore.
A green room is an area where performers wait before going on stage. At Wheeler Theater, it’s a tacked-on room behind the stage of the ’30s era building, originally a movie theater.
Painted an industrial green inside, it had no light fixtures, just bare bulbs in the ceiling.
The doors stuck and the paint was chipped and marked up, with the words “quiet please” written in marker.
Old wooden school chairs were the only seating, while a piece of bare plywood partitioned off the makeup table, an old office work station.
“It was yucky,” Debbie Zajicek said.
Zajicek and her husband, Rick, already had experience remodeling fort housing units, known as the Suds Units, used by visiting Centrum instructors and performers.
According to Rick Zajicek, the idea to renovate the green room originated when the Tokyo String Quartet were in town and played at Wheeler Theater.
All the members of the quartet are world-renowned musicians whose instruments were made by Stradivarius, he said.
“I came back here, and I was appalled,” Rick Zajicek said of the green room.
“As someone who is a volunteer and donor, it was embarrassing.”
Donations
The donation of a white sectional sofa from Robin and David Ditzler got the makeover started, Zajicek said.
Bill Wickline built two tables and a clothes rack for the dressing area, now partitioned from the seating area by a curtain. The Zajiceks and Bill and Patti Wickline painted the walls white.
Cindy Hill Finnie contacted Mary Weidner at Peninsula Floors and Furnishings, who donated the gray carpeting.
State park maintenance workers replaced the doors, installed light fixtures and found a small refrigerator, which they installed.
The volunteers added a black chair, white slat blinds and a picture for the brick wall.
“It’s not only clean, it’s welcoming,” Rick Zajicek said.
On Tuesday, Centrum held an al fresco luncheon to thank the volunteers and staff who helped with the project, including Russ Hendricks and fort maintenance workers Joe Benson, Harmon Ornbaum, Marvin Weaver and Ike Eisenhower.
John MacElwee, Centrum’s director, thanked everyone who helped, including Holly Green of Centrum for overseeing the project, a collaboration among volunteers and fort staff.
“What a great way to celebrate the opening of a brand-new season — with a brand-new green room,” MacElwee said.
Members of the Borromeo String Quartet will be the first performers to use the new green room before their concerts today and Saturday.
Tickets to hear the quartet, which is based in Boston, are almost sold out, MacElwee said Thursday.
“We just know they are going to play better after being in the green room,” he said.
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
