Kearney Community Theatre 3 of 3

Two KCT Stalwarts Remember—Stan Dart and Mary Haeberle

A Theatrical Company Looking for a Stage—e pluribus unum!

Mary Haeberle Remembers—a surprising amount!

My experiences with Kearney Community Theatre go back when my husband, John Haeberle, appeared in the cast of Stalag 17. The year was 1961. The play was held at. Kearney High School. It was set in a German prisoner of war camp during WWII, the stage version of the movie of the same name. John played the Sergeant. Because of the German setting, Ellen Baldwin was called in to help the actors with the language. At the time, I was pregnant with our second child, Martha. I don’t remember how many performances were given but I think at least 3 or 4, and it was well received.

I don’t know what play was next but Gail Lowenberg and family moved to Kearney. She had a theatre background, wanted to help grow community theater in Kearney, and would go on to play a tremendous role at KCT.

In 1980 a new restaurant was built in Kearney called Cattlemans; the bar was named Dicky Dugans. In the summer of 1980, a cast of theatre people performed The Life and Death of Sneaky Fitch at Dicky Dugans. It turned out the cast and audience were having fun in Kearney on the same weekend as the tornado in Grand Island.

I was encouraged to audition for Picnic, which was to be held in the Experimental Theatre at the Kearney State College in 1981. I did audition and got the role of Rosemary – the old maid school teacher. I played opposite Bob Hobbs. In one scene, Bob and I were called on to dance. Bob was a good dancer. I was not! This caused some problems any number of rehearsals were not quite able to solve! Gail Lowenberg directed the show and Bets Lundeen and Mitch Bean played the leading roles. KCT entered Picnic in competition in the Nebraska Association of Community Theatres Festival which was held in Columbus, Nebraska, in March of that year. As I recall we didn’t win a thing!

I can’t remember when Rick Marlatt, a young farmer with a theater background, moved south of Kearney. Rick and his wife, Kari, became valuable assets to KCT, Rick eventually becoming its Artistic Director.

One of the occasions I recall the most began when KCT was holding auditions for The Gin Game. Rick was directing. At then end of the auditions, I was given the role of Fonsia, playing opposite to Don Maroncelli playing Weller. Our two characters lived in a nursing home, and the play called for us to play gin rummy on stage throughout the show. The dynamic of the play was simple-Fonsia always won each game! This did not make Weller happy! We did have cheat notes written on the card table!

We performed this show at the KSC Experimental Theatre for A Night of One Acts. The other one acts were The Ugly Duckling and The Lesson. Tickets were $5.00 for adults and $3.50 for students and senior citizens. Gin Game won the competition and we took the show on the road, performing at the Elks Club in Kearney as well as in Red Cloud, Nebraska. We also performed at the Nebraska Pharmaceutical Convention when they held their first meeting in out-state Nebraska, and since John was a pharmacist, this was especially fun for us.

KCT acquired an unoccupied church building on Ave. A between 25th & 26th street. Many volunteers were responsible to renovate the church, turning it into a theatre. Dave Anderson and Stan Dart led the way, and Stan has left an account of that here on Kearney Creates. Of course there were many others who helped, many of whom have passed away by now. The quarters were small but we even managed to have a dinner theatre on Ave. A!

I don’t remember who managed the box office, the daily running of the theater etc. but I do believe Marilyn Anderson and Gail Lowenberg had a great deal to do with it. At this time John and I had a pharmacy on Central Ave. The pharmacy had a 1935 refrigerator. The theatre did not have a refrigerator for cast members so we gave it to them to have in the basement! When the theater moved to its current location, the refrigerator came back to us, and is still working in my garage in 2025!

While Stan and John were cleaning the basement of the building, they found the skeleton of a petrified rat and decided to use it as an award for the theater. They built a frame, a glass case and had a gold placard put on it. To this day the “coveted” Golden Rat Award is still awarded at the annual KCT awards banquet!

I performed in several plays at the old theatre. Among them was West Side Waltz with Phyllis Farenbruch, Colleen Lewis, and Don Wolfe, directed by Brad Driml. I had to “play” a violin on stage in this show even though I had never picked up a violin before! Another show was On Borrowed Time with Dewey Adams, Kevin Butters, Chuck Peek, and Rick Marlatt. Pam Hendrickson directed. [Editor’s Note: see Stan Dart’s story about Kevin Butters and the old theater.]

Other shows come to mind–Cactus Flower and Tribute among them, as well as
D.K. Molar and Wash Your Troubles Away, both melodramas performed in the summer at another venue.

After the new building was built, both John and I remained very involved with KCT! John was on the board, I was asked to be a board member also, and even now I work hard at selling ads for the production programs. We were on stage together in The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild, directed I think by Jeff Knapp. John had to appear on stage in drag and I was on stage in a one-piece dancing girl outfit! It brought down the audience!

“The Octette Bridge Club” was another show that had us on stage together. Four women were on stage playing bridge throughout the show, and I think I was the only one who knew how to play bridge! John was a photographer who took our picture on stage with flashbulbs! It was a fun show and gave us the thought that we should visit Mama’s grave every Halloween. We didn’t, but we did get together every Halloween for a couple years.

Christmas shows were always fun to be in! I was in several and a couple of them twice! My grandson, Joe, was in “The Christmas Story” with me. He was the little kid who hid under the table. I was in this show twice- both times at KCT. Joe had to eat oatmeal in the show every night – it was a good thing he liked oatmeal- unlike his Grandma!

Miracle on 34th Street is another show I was in twice at KCT! My oldest grandson, Alex, was in the show as an elf. It was always fun to be on stage with my grandsons! My son, John, did some of the art work for this show.

I played in To Kill a Mockingbird, twice at KCT and later again for Crane River Theater. It’s such a powerful script! And it was always fun to play a bitchy old lady.

Mary Haeberle
June 26, 2025

Editor’s Note: Mary is a bit modest about her appearances, so I’ll take the liberty of noting that, in her memorabilia were playbills or scripts, often both, for It’s a Wonderful Life, The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild, Tribute, Absurd Person Singular, Cactus Flower, Over the River and Through the Woods, On Borrowed Time, Miracle on 34th Street, Inherit the Wind, Wash Your Troubles Away, D. K. Molar-the Devious Doctor, The Sunshine Boys, A 1940’s Radio Christmas Carol, Leading Ladies, The Inspector General, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Octette Bridge Club, Picnic, To Kill a Mockingbird, Annie Get Your Gun, and The Westside Waltz…so many shows in which she acted, helped produce, or worked backstage.

And the names of those she joined in one capacity or another read like the who’s who of KCT—Phyllis Haverkamp and Phyllis Farenbruch, Rick Marlatt, Stan and Carol Dart, Brad Driml, a host of Hajda’s, Bill Wood, Harry Pagels, Eileen John, Kim Eikoff, Shaun Clark, George Syring, Dick Jussell, Mary Berglund, Bob Park, Jeff Knapp, the Lawson’s, Sandy Janssen, Mitch Bean, Don Maroncelli, Bets Lundeen, the Guardiola’s, the Ratzlaff’s, the Homans, Alex Schwarz, Phil Bartruff, Gail Lowenberg, Dave Becker, Pam Henrickson, Dave Anderson, the Thalkens, Katie Nickel, the Rozema-Lillyman clan, and even Chuck Peek—just to name some at random.

Along with just a few of those names, the name of Haeberle looms large in the grand history of KCT from a theater company looking for a stage to the little theater downtown to the current thrust stage, their roles (pardon the pun) were played out at the heart of it all.

Stan and Carol are another two of those names who stand out in KCT’s history, often as not performing, working backstage, helping to produce shows, or serving on or leading the Board; their daughter Jessica was there with them and in her own right, in all those capacities, later making theater her career in Iowa and Oregon.

Kearney Community Theater -KCT- Memories by Stan Dart

The old theater was haunted. Several volunteers/board members reported incidents of unexpected movements and noises, music. Merlyn Anderson believes they are the ghosts of two sisters. There is also some evidence that the sisters followed KCT to the new theater. Again, some volunteers, alone in the theater, have had experiences that moved them to leave because of the sense of “the other” being in there with them.

When KCT made the decision to build the new theater we sought grant funding from several philanthropic groups. One was The Kiewit Foundation. KCT had received small grants off and on before. Dart wrote a Kiewit grant requesting $60,000 matching grant – they would give us $60,000 if we raised $60,000. With Kiewit, you could only apply once every 2 years. We got the grant into them by the application deadline. A month or so later we get a letter from Kiewit that denied our request. However, the written comments from Kiewit made reference to various KCT people who were not active and previous projects that KCT had submitted for support.

Dart called Kiewit to ask for clarification of what grant request they had reviewed. A couple days later they responded with an apology that “yes” they had mixed up our big grant with another smaller one we had previously applied for. They said we could reapply in the next round of applications – which was 12 months away. But we were right in the middle of a building campaign and a year’s wait would be a disaster. Dart asked if they would go back and review the $60,000 grant that we DID get in on time. A week later, Kiewit notified KCT that they would fund our $60,000 requests as well as count any funds we have raised to that time as part of the matching challenge.

The next day, the Baldwin Foundation gave us $40,000 which we were able to pair with about $30,000 we had already raised. So, in one week we got $60,000 from Kiewit, $40,000 from Baldwin and covered the match from Kiewit by over $10,000. Eventually, the fund-raising effort reached $200,000 and we broke ground in early 1990.

Once construction was completed the State Fire Marshall had to inspect and certify the building as fit for occupancy. Although we had a liquor license from the old theater, we could not transfer the license to the new building without a Fire Marshal’s recertification. AND we also could not open the theater to the public unless the Fire Marshal gave us a Certificate of Occupancy.

We had scheduled the first show for a Thursday night in early October. The Fire Marshall came to do the inspection on the Tuesday before opening. There were some places in the building that would likely not pass inspection so we posted people around the building to shield his viewing. Especially illegal? The open railing section in front of the sound and light booth. Also, the electrical room next to the booth was well beyond safe.

The Fire Marshall gave us the permit, but he was from North Platte and had go back there to complete his paperwork and then send the Permit to us by mail. Under pressure, he did agree that we could drive out to North Platte and pick up the permit the next day, Wednesday. So, someone from KCT drove to North Platte Wednesday morning to get the certificate. On Thursday morning Dart (who served as Bar Manager for 25 years) grabs the Fire Marshall’s Occupancy Certification and drove to Lincoln to the ever-so-slow State Offices to get the Liquor Permit, making it back to Kearney about 4:30 to set up the bar for the night’s opening performance at 8:00. Later that night several of us got really drunk

The first show in the new building was “Cheating Cheaters. The theater was barely ready. On opening night, the main floor public areas were “open” but backstage and the entire upstairs was still raw drywall. As the play progressed through the evening, costumes began to take on drywall dust and white shoeprints covered the stage.

The cat-walk hanging above the stage was custom made by a local welding company. It arrived in several pieces of raw unpainted metal. It had to be hung from the main structure before the air handling system and ceiling tiles could be installed. Gayle Lawson and Stan Dart suggested that they could paint it black over a weekend and have it ready for the next week’s work. It rained on Saturday and into Sunday morning. On Sunday, we got word that the cat-walk was going up that next day – Monday. Lawson and Dart completed the paint job VERY LATE Sunday evening after several sixpacks of beer.

Once the cat-walk was hung and placed, the air-handling and ceiling tiles could be installed as well. The air-ducts were dull silver ductwork and the ceiling tiles were white – so much for the “Black Box.”

Finally, the “light-bars” had to be suspended and wired back to the booth. Rick Marlatt was the primary “electrician”.

The theater interior had to be painted black. Several “lifts” were rented to accomplish these tasks. These lifts are very heavy with low centers of gravity to off-set the sway and torque when they are extended to full height. In order to reach all parts of the ceiling to be painted black (the ceiling light cans, and the ductwork etc.) the lifts had to be “bridged” across the different levels of the house in slow succession. It took 2 long weekends for volunteers to complete the task.

From the early 1990’s through 2007, Sandy Janssen was a frequent artistic director for shows. Her partner was always MaryAnn Lawson (Assistant Director) who was the best Stage Manager ever. MaryAnn passed away after a short battle with cancer. After a redecoration of the Green Room the Board of Directors dedicated it as “The Mary Ann Lawson Green Room” at the Annual Meeting following Mary Ann’s passing.

Editor’s Note: Please look for other Dart memories in a companion piece about the old theater on A street and the transition to the current theater found in a separate entry on the Darts and still more in Lauren Bonk’s second installment of her series on Kearney Community Theater.