SIOUX CITY | When a two-story brick building served as a school, sneakers squeaked across the gym floor and elementary students lobbed basketballs at towering hoops. In 1986, a theater-crazed couple looked at the same space and saw potential to build their business.
Webster School got a second act.
The founders of Lamb Arts Regional Theatre repurposed the abandoned building on Market Street to stage their productions.
Starting in 1979, Russ Wooley and Diana Guhin Wooley offered dinner theater in the Crystal Ballroom of the Sioux City Hilton Inn for the first seven seasons. She called it a “bus and truck” operation where they would haul everything in less than a week before each show, putting a pinch on rehearsal times.
The venue, which is now the Sioux City Hotel, posed other limitations.
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“The Hilton was controlling very important elements of our business like how often we could do a show and, ultimately, the price. The cost of the dinner kept going up and up and up,” he said. “We couldn’t grow the business.”
The Wooleys contemplated leaving the city they grew up in, the city they loved to find a home for Lamb.
A fellow theater-loving couple intervened. Marvin and Frances Kline helped them incorporate the company and make the move to Webster School, where the theater is celebrating its 35th season.
“They were instrumental in giving us the confidence to move because it was big step,” Russ said. “He was my mentor. I still remember him coming into the theater office, coming around the door with his tan trench coat. He was just a grand, grand, grand person.”
At 85, Marvin Kline passed away in 2004, but his fervor for live theater was not forgotten.
The Klines established a legacy of being strong supporters of the arts in Siouxland – financially and otherwise.
“They realized the value of live theater in Sioux City,” Diana said, “and they were able to really do some wonderful things for us and for the community.”
In the early years after leaving the hotel, the Wooleys faced substantial startup costs for renovations and equipment to retrofit the gym into the main stage theater.
They saved money where they could – in one case, salvaging old wooden chairs from West Middle School for theater seating. Diana can look back on those times and laugh at their “Lamb pads.”
“It was something to sit on and people were calling them their flotation devices,” she said.
The next set of seats came out of a movie theater. The drawback of those: they had to be bolted in place. Finally, they raised enough money six years ago buy 200 new padded, portable chairs.
Built in 1939, the former school underwent other changes to accommodate the growing business.
The Wooleys continued the dinner theater tradition for about 15 years after making the move in 1986. One of the first floor classrooms was converted into the dining hall, where they served catered meals.
After a while, the split-focus on food and entertainment proved to be double the work but not double the fun.
“We had to have servers. We had to wash all the dishes. We had to clean and sterilize all the stuff. Then, put on a show, build a set and do all that,” Russ said.
Dinner theater was all the rage when they started but fell out of favor in the industry.
The classroom-turned-dining room was remade again. In 2002, an intimate black box theater was created as a second performance space.
In the past decade or so, the Wooleys have been able to expand other offerings, too, partly because they staked out a new course of business.
Lamb, which earned its moniker from the couple’s sheep-ish surname, benefited from becoming a nonprofit organization eight years ago.
Earlier on, a concerted effort created another growth spurt.
The Lamb School of Theatre & Music became a year-round arts education program open to all ages in 1999, when Diana left her 22-year career teaching those subjects in the Sioux City Community School District.
In fact, she taught music classes at Webster School shortly before it closed.
“I still go through the rooms and I see the teachers in the rooms. Even though most of them are still alive, they’re like the ghosts of Webster,” she said with a laugh. “I have a lot of very wonderful, pleasant memories of the different rooms.”
And judging by the way the Wooleys work, they’re bound to make more.
