The "Love Story" Birth of Contra Costa Civic Theatre

It’s one of El Cerrito’s greatest love stories. Louis Flynn, a serious young actor, met Bettianne Foster in a theater.

Louis, a drama student, was in the play, and Bettianne, studying journalism, was there to review it. Was her review positive?

“I would hope so,” says their daughter, Kathleen Flynn Ray, who helps run the , which the Flynns founded in El Cerrito 51 years ago, making it one of the oldest community theaters in the Bay Area.

On Feb. 24, the El Cerrito Historical Society is sponsoring a about the theater along with a backstage tour. The theater’s current production, , plays through March 13.

The theater, in a way, was a gift from Bettianne to her husband, who had given up so much for his family.

Louis Flynn, a quiet man who blossomed on stage, had been determined to live the life of a theater professional. After studying drama at Seattle University, where he’d met and married Bettiane, he studied playwriting at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., with the legendary Walter Kerr.

But, his daughter says, once he and Bettianne started a family, he gave up hopes for a roving theatrical life in favor of the more financially stable occupation of bookkeeper, eventually working for a foundry in Berkeley.

“But he always wanted to act,” she says.

So, like many frustrated thespians, he performed with several community troupes, including the Richmond Community Players and the Kensington Theater Guild – and found a different kind of frustration.

“He was frustrated with other community theaters,” Ray says. “They weren’t run well, they didn’t start on time, they didn’t treat people ‘like ladies and gentlemen.’ That was my father’s mantra.”

Dorothelle Fites, who played with Louis at the Kensington Theater Guild and then at the Civic Theatre, tells what happened next.

“Bettianne asked Louis if he would like to have his own theater. Well, of course he fell apart at that point. Nothing would thrill him more than having his own theater.”

Ray says: “It’s the best love story there is.”

The location Bettianne had in mind was the former Vista movie theater on San Pablo Avenue at Blake Street. “We all got together and redid the building,” Fites says. They put on their first play in the new theater in February 1960.

Louis, who already had a reputation for his starring role in Harvey in Richmond (as Elwood P. Dowd, whose best friend was a giant, invisible rabbit), soon convinced many of the Kensington players to decamp for El Cerrito.

But it was Bettianne’s business sense and gumption that got the theater up and running and kept it going. “He knew nothing about business,” Fites recalled. “They would have gone broke the first month if he had anything to do with it. She really knew what she was doing.”

“She was a tiny little woman,” longtime performer Pat Parker says. “But boy, you didn’t mess with her. She was very feisty.”

Louis chose the plays, wrote the troupe’s oft-repeated hit The Orchid Sandwich, and directed them, winning a reputation for starting a rehearsal on time, never wasting his actors’ time, directing them gently but firmly, and encouraging them to leave their troubles at the theater door, says Parker, who’s acted at the Civic Theatre since 1976.

“He was just so enthusiastic,” Fites says. “That was his main inspiration. The way he directed, he never criticized, he always built people up. He was very upbeat and he made people feel so good.”

“He was a gentleman above all,” Parker says.

Louis could be tough, though, Fites says, remembering the time he caught a leading lady imbibing between acts. Fites stepped into the role the very next performance.

Another thing about Louis. “Louis would always have the lead role in the play,” Fites remembers. In later years that changed – but he kept doing much applauded cameos.

Parker recalls Louis as a superb actor, “very down-to-earth, very believable.”

Like all theaters, the Civic had its trials and amusements over the years – a dog, scheduled to perform in several scenes, that wandered on during inopportune moments; performing goats, one that commuted from nearby Everett Street and another that lived in the theater basement; cast members missing show times; cast members gamely performing through personal tragedies.

The biggest trial by far, and the one that defines the theater, came in 1968 when the owner of the old Vista theater needed the space for other purposes.

For two years the Civic performed at Harding School. But Bettianne set her sights on a city-owned building that once housed the Boys Club. And Bettianne proved persuasive, convincing the city to lease it to the theater for $1 a year – a sum that has not gone up. The Civic Theatre covers building expenses and insurance.

To expand and remodel the building, Bettianne reached out to the community, and it came through.

More than being in El Cerrito, the Civic Theater has always been part of El Cerrito. The Flynns, who’d moved to El Cerrito in 1955, knew people from the theater – and also from the wider community, thanks to Bettianne’s serving as the Chamber of Commerce’s manager. For several years, the Chamber was next door to the theater on San Pablo Avenue.

Kathleen Ray remembers when the bank turned them down for a $20,000 loan. “That was one of hardest days of our lives,” she says. But the next bank, managed by Ken Berndt, said yes. Berndt, a former chamber president, and his wife Pat, who is currently the chamber’s secretary, have both performed with the Civic Theatre.

“The theater would not be in existence today without Ken Berndt,” Ray says. She also credits the late Don Haslett, an Oakland trucker, whose financial backing, she says, was crucial. He was part of “The Magnificent 20,” 20 supporters who agreed to guarantee the $20,000 loan.

Supporters raised another $20,000 to cover the $40,000 cost of initial construction. Volunteers turned the former Boys Club into a theater – work that continues. Just last year who, like his sister, grew up in the theater, oversaw the reconstruction of the theater kitchen. “We plow money back into that building like crazy,” says Phil Reed, who’s been acting with the company since 1992 and serves on its board.

The theater has always been a family operation in several ways. The Flynns are certainly its leading family, supplying four generations of volunteers, starting with Bettianne’s father, Guy Foster, who helped built the stage and did much of the carpentry during the early days, Matt says.

Today, Kathleen Ray oversees the theater’s popular children's classes and summer camp. She also teaches drama at Head Royce School in Oakland. Matt, who is art director for the TV show The Office, still creates sets for some of the theater’s plays. Kathleen’s children are also involved with the theater, as is Kathleen’s husband, Ken Ray.

Today the theater has 950 season subscribers. Most theater-goers come from within a five mile radius of the theater – which suggests strong support in El Cerrito.

The Civic Theatre doesn’t shy away from the term “community theater,” which some people consider derogatory, “like it’s not professional,” Pat Parker says.

Parker, who has performed with such professional theaters as Marin Theater Company, dropped her union membership because it blocked her from performing with the Civic Theater and similar community theaters.

The theater’s annual half-million dollar budget comes from ticket sales and income from their children’s program and drama camps — not from grants, which they do not seek. “The children’s theater and summer programs are what keep us solvent,” Reed says.

Bettianne died in 1996, after suffering with Alzheimer’s disease for several years. Louis died in 2008. Since their passing, Reed says, the Civic Theatre has been “changing in a wonderful way.”

He attributes that to Louis. “Louis was smart enough to ask for help,” Reed says. “He realized that when he died it could flounder.”

Over a decade, Reed says, Louis gradually turned over artistic directions to three young theater professionals, Daren Carollo, David Bogdonoff and Mark Manske. “Many people would not have done that,” Reed says. Carollo and Bogdonoff remain with the theater.

The newcomers made decisions Louis never would have made. “He liked light comedy and musicals,” Reed says, “nothing that was a bummer.”

But soon the Civic was presenting One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with profanity – never before heard on the Civic’s stage. Also new to the Civic Theatre, he says, was the play’s “far from cheerful ending.”

“(Flynn) said, ‘I think it’s a terrible idea but you guys are in charge now,’ ” Reed says.

The theater presents up to six plays a year – including old Civic Theatre favorites. “Our people have told us all this new stuff is great,” Reed says, “but we want the old chestnuts too.”

Though the founders are gone, Ray says, their influence is still felt. “Even though my parents aren’t here, they’re here.”

Betty Buginas contributed to this report and wrote an based on her interview with Matt Flynn.