PERFORMING ARTS
HISTORY ON STAGE
PHOTOS BY ED DRONDOSKI
Volunteer actors rehearse the comedy Wild Mushrooms at the Pineapple Playhouse in Fort Pierce. The players, from left to right, are Ellie Nicholas, Jerry
Budiner, Kara Henson, Dawn Furtado, Brendan Wenger, James Anthony Davis, Donna Amaru, show director Clara Feder McCarthy, and Mark “Brink”
Brinkerhoff, president of the theater’s board of directors.
Pineapple Playhouse celebrates 40 years of
community theater on the Treasure Coast
BY SUSAN BURGESS
Sixty-three years ago, when Wilma Cowles first imagined
50
a community theater in Fort Pierce, she could
not have known it would be thriving under another
name, in its own building, in the next century.
But her Dolphin Players of the 1950s and ‘60s not
only survived, it thrived. After a short hiatus in the 1960s, the
troupe was reincarnated as the St. Lucie Community Theatre.
It was incorporated under that name in 1972, and the community
theater group at the Pineapple Playhouse is now
celebrating its 40th year.
Cowles lived to see it through its 35th anniversary. She died
at the age of 93 after taking on every possible role through
the years: mentoring, lending her garage for prop storage,
directing, acting.
Years of laughter, surprises and teamwork have molded the
group into a fluid band of volunteers who can do each others’
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SEASON OF THE ARTS