1925: The “Little Theatre” Movement
The setting was 5 Turner Alley, studio apartment of regionalist artist Grant Wood. The year was 1925. A small group of theatre enthusiasts produced the fantasy Cardboard Moon for a capacity audience of thirty. They enjoyed cookies and coffee afterwards and asked each other rhetorically, “Why don’t we have a theatre?” and the “Little Theatre” movement was born in Cedar Rapids. For the next four years they undertook a sporadic number of small productions.
Then, in 1929 a young woman, Catherine Hunt, returned home from dramatic school. She sought out David Turner and asked him a pointed question. “Are there any people in Cedar Rapids interested in organizing a little theater?” David organized a meeting of about thirty men and women at the vacant second floor of the old Mansfield House at Third Avenue and Seventh Street. The building had been, in order, the Turner Mortuary, a home for an art school, and headquarters for the Hobby House, to whom the second floor belonged at the time. Catherine outlined her idea and the Community Players exploded into being.
