Lakewood Center For the Arts

The Lakewood Theatre Company is a popular and financially successful member of the arts community, it is the cornerstone around which Lakewood Center for the Arts has been built. Lakewood Theatre Company began in November, 1952, when a group of Lake Oswego residents decided that their community was not complete without a theatre and decided to organize what was known as the Oswego Players. From that first production of Blithe Spirit, the players performed in junior and senior high schools and halls throughout the Lake Oswego area, having no permanent home during its first nine years. In 1961, a fund drive was launched that led to the purchase of a vacant Methodist church on Greenwood Road. Beginning with Arsenic and Old Lace, the company, then known as Lake Oswego Community Theatre, staged more than 110 productions there before they outgrew the facility. By then the I00 seat theatre was continuously sold out, the building provided no room for class and rehearsal space, and off-stage storage was extremely limited. When the Lakewood School became available in 1979, an advisory task force determined that acquiring the building would encourage people to learn, teach, display and, above all, participate in the arts. With this in mind, the Lakewood Theatre Company nonprofit corporation decided to expand its purposes and became the Lakewood Center for the Arts.