“It was 26 years ago that a small group of theater enthusiasts decided to mount a production here on South Whidbey. They picked out the play (You Can’t Take It With You), assembled a cast (Jack Eskenazi, Betty Hall, Frank Sullivan, Gary Piper and Pam Lind) and got to work. It took us six months to get it ready, said Eskenazi, one of those early Island Theatre pioneers. We rehearsed — practiced, I guess — in the old Pole Building at the Fairgrounds. It was really cold in there!Eskenazi recalled that the director left the production (We were all green beans) and then came back. And during the performance of their second play in the Pole Building, Curious Savage, they brought out kerosene heaters at intermission.They are some of the memories that span a quarter century of Island Theatre, today mounting their latest production, Glengarry Glen Ross, in the elegant (and warm) environs of the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts. From those earliest days to the beginnings of this new century, Island Theater has grown, matured, seen new faces and missed familiar ones.But, says current board member and Island Theater stalwart Nancy White, it continues to maintain a strong tradition of offering a diversity of theater experience.We do well-known plays and new, original material, White said. Sometimes they’re crowd pleasers, sometimes not.Eskenazi has piles of old scripts and playbills, posters advertising plays such as Artichoke, by Joanna M. Glass, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which Eskenazi played Jack, the guy that swept out the place. I had to learn how to smoke a joint for that role, he said with a laugh. He and the other neophytes also learned the business of theater, and Eskenazi remembers those who were proficient: Chuck Whitmore in lighting; Jackie and Larry Shafer as directors; Sally Gustafson, a great supporter with a sense of humor that just wouldn’t quit; Gwen Purdy and Pam Lind; Betty Hall, who did everything. She was in charge of production, Eskenazi said, and even stayed backstage during the performance, ready to go from one end to the other whispering lines in case an actor forgot them.The most famous was Rick Prael’s two-minute pause in Of Mice and Men, Eskenazi said. That was a long pause.After the first two plays in the Pole Building, Island Theater moved to the new performing stage built by Blake and Lynn Willeford at The Clyde. The first production there was Last of the Red Hot Lovers, on July 4th weekend, 1974.The plans to put on three plays a year were pared down at first, Eskenazi said. It was hard to get props. We had to build things. Makeup was always a lot of fun, though, sitting in Dr. Prael’s dentist chair. We’d run back and forth between there and The Clyde.Some of the productions were huge, Eskenazi said, with large casts. You couldn’t believe the number people we would fit on that stage, he laughed. There was always a lot of help, with everyone involved, everyone a director at one time or another, he said. The audiences were receptive, and ranged from a full house one night to a dozen or so another.Sometimes that was even more fun, Eskenazi said.Segue to 1987, when some of the originals were taking a break or retiring from the group. New blood was ready.Jeff Handley was president; Norm Stockholm built all the sets. So many people got involved, Nancy White said: Amber Maier, Nancy Porter, Shelly Hartle, George Cribbs, Ken Church, Richard Evans, Bill Walton, Pat and Mike McVay, Jo Gearheart, James Enslow, Candace Culver, so many others.White herself was simply sitting in the back of The Clyde waiting for her sister to audition when she was approached to volunteer backstage. I was a total rookie. Betty Hall taught me everything she knew about stage management, White said. White’s walls in the Langley liquor store are covered with posters of plays well-known and fondly-remembered. She and Culver carried the torch through a few years when enthusiasm waned and people burned out — or were on overload, White said. In recent years Island Theater has become revitalized with a new image and a new influx of people. Its new president is Ken Church; White is treasurer, Culver is secretary and David Gignac and Saranell DeChambeau are board members.It is still a nonprofit, self-sustaining organization, with any excess funds from one production going back to support the next. And it’s full of tradition.For example, when a show starts at 8 we’ll wait until 10 minutes after before raising the curtain, White said. There are always five or six who who come in at the last minute. That’s just an Island tradition. “