Ash Gilmer and other Theatre Longview members rehearse for their upcoming Best of Broadway performance Monday, June 20, 2022, at the Longview Community Center. (Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo)

Theatre Longview’s upcoming Best of Broadway, with performances Friday through Sunday, will pay tribute to the Longview Community Center.

This year’s theme is “To Be Continued: A Celebration of the History and Future of the Longview Community Center.” The center was built in 1940 and community theaters began performing plays and musicals there in the 1960s.

Board President Denise Knutson said, “The Longview Community Center is near and dear to many people in the East Texas area with many fond memories of attending or performing in plays and musicals at the center. We are excited for the opportunity to honor the many hours of theater performances that have taken place in the center over the years.”

Knutson said this will be the group’s first time to have the fundraiser at the Longview Community Center.

“We recently started performing in the community center again and this will be our first time to have the fundraiser in the community center,” she said. “We’ve always done it at Grace Crossing Church where we were performing three years before we came back to the community center.”

Lots of research went into preparing for the event.

“We found some scrapbooks that go all the way back to the 1960s when they started doing performances in the community center,” Knutson said. “We found a newspaper article talking about … when they started doing musical performances in the ‘60s and they had found records of other performances being done there since the center was built in the ‘40s.”

Knutson said they thought it would be fun to find out what musicals and plays were performed years ago at the center.

“We’re going to do songs from a lot of those musicals,” she said. “And we’re going to do a slide show of some of the photographs and tell stories about the history of theater in the community center.”

The production also will include a special performance by Longview Community Center stage veteran and food columnist Barbara McClellan.

Director Abby Jester said the goal is to take everybody back to when the community center was first built.

“The goal is … to refresh memories about some of the performances that the Longview Community Theatre did,” she said. “So really, it’s just a fun experience of taking you through the decades of Broadway musicals.”

Some of the songs being performed are “If I Were a Rich Man” from “Fiddler on the Roof,” “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Jester said she is honored to be a part of the show.

“I’m really honored to get to be the director for this particular show and I have learned a lot about the history of the community center,” she said. “It’s been a really rewarding experience getting to go through all of the old notebooks and getting to see all the old posters and playbills and pictures of everybody performing.”

New to this year’s fundraiser is the cocktail hour reception before Friday’s performance.

The reason behind doing the cocktail hour is because in the past … at the community center, every single show, they did an opening night reception,” Knutson said. “It was a huge deal and everyone would get all dressed up and it would be this huge community event. We decided it would be fun this year to start doing opening night receptions again like they used to do.”

Knutson said cocktail hour reception tickets are still available.

“We had the cocktail hour reception tickets as presale only but we do have a few left and we’re leaving the sales open right now,” she said.

Knutson is looking forward to both the reception and performances.

“I hope everyone will come out and enjoy it,” she said. “It’s also going to feature some current songs — celebrating the past but also looking forward to the future of community theater and the Longview Community Center.”

Jester added, “It’s just been a really cool, interesting and fun experience to get to do the research and put this show together.”

What: Best of Broadway

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday; 6 p.m. cocktail hour reception Friday

Where: Longview Community Center, 500 E. Whaley St., Longview

Tickets: $15, $35 cocktail hour reception and performance

Information: https://www.theatrelongview.com/