Carousel players return to carousel
To celebrate 50 years this summer, actors, crew and staff of The Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre pose for a group photo Monday afternoon at the Historic Playland Pier Carousel. “South Pacific,” a play set in an island paradise during World War II with two parallel love stories, is in its final days this weekend at the Kroc Center. To purchase tickets visit www.cdasummertheatre.com LOREN BENOIT/Press
The return of the Historic Playland Pier Carousel to downtown Coeur d’Alene has special meaning for a local theater group.
In the early years of Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, in the ’60s and early ’70s, the acting company called itself the Carousel Players. Each year, the players would pose for a photo in front of the carousel at Playland Pier, until it was no longer there.
The carousel, built by the Spillman Engineering Co. in New York in 1922, spent more than 30 years at Coeur d’Alene’s Playland Pier and was sold in 1974, disappearing into the unknown. In 1986, collectors Duane and Carol Perron, owners of the National Museum of Carousel Art in Oregon, found it intact at an auction, purchased it and lovingly restored it.
In 2010, Coeur d’Alene resident John Foote read about a group wanting to return the carousel to Coeur d’Alene and negotiated its purchase from the Perrons. He and his wife, Pat, purchased the carousel in 2011 and donated it to the Coeur d’Alene Carousel Foundation.
The Playland Pier Carousel was reinstalled earlier this year near Memorial Field and is offering rides once again.
Now that the carousel has returned home and the theatre is in its 50th anniversary season, Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre has decided to renew the photo tradition.
“When I heard that the carousel was returning, that was my first thought — oh how neat that the company can start taking annual photos in front of the carousel again,” said Tracey Vaughan, the summer theater group’s executive director. “What a unique opportunity for us as an organization to revisit our past along with all of the locals who are revisiting their youth with the return of the carousel.”