Davenport Theatrical receives grants

Awards from the Columbia Basin Foundation and Washington State Arts Commission will support a countywide production in December.

Davenport Theatrical has been awarded two grants for an upcoming production to be performed in December. The play will have auditions and performances in four Lincoln County towns: Davenport, Reardan, Odessa, and Wilbur. The title and full details will be announced along with the company’s 2017-18 season later this month.

“It’s always been our mission to serve all of Lincoln County,” explained Managing Director Drew Kowalkowski, “For nine years, we’ve been talking about how to get more artists and audiences from across the county involved. We finally decided that we had to take the show on the road! This will allow us to bring more people from each of these neighboring communities into the fold and to show them that we are their local community theater, too.”

The first is a $2,000 grant from the Erle and Helen Sola Community Fund of the Columbia Basin Foundation. The fund provides support to organizations in Grant, Adams and western Lincoln Counties, so performances in Wilbur and Odessa opened up this grant opportunity to the nine-year-old nonprofit, based in Davenport.

The second grant is a $1,750 award from the Washington State Arts Commission, a state agency that previously provided support for DT’s 2016 production of the musical “Big Fish.” Davenport Theatrical is one of only eight Eastern Washington organizations who will receive a grant from the commission this year, out of 40 organizations receiving a total of almost $404,000 statewide. Davenport is also the smallest community of the Eastern Washington towns on the list of grantees.

Davenport Theatrical is quickly becoming a leader among small arts organizations in the Inland Northwest, with a budget that has grown from just $3,000 to almost $70,000 in the past three years. The upcoming season will also include a children’s theater presentation and a large-scale musical in which local volunteers will get the opportunity to perform alongside and learn from professional theatre artists from around the country, as part of the company’s signature guest artist program.

Davenport Theatrical is a community theater company and Lincoln County’s only nonprofit producing arts organization. The company has mounted 16 productions since 2008. Drew Kowalkowski is the managing director and Karen Brewster is the artistic director. Visit DavenportTheatrical.org.