Lawton Community Theater moves back home, announces new season

Sometimes, it’s good to go back to old roots. After about a year, the Lawton Community Theatre is moving back to its old home, 1316 NW Bell.

“We’re blessed to have McMahon, but we need a home,” Allen Jolly, LCT board president, said.

“For the last year or so, we’ve been theatrical nomads,” Kristoffer Pendergraft, managing director of LCT said. “Our building was damaged over a year ago in June of 2023 in that big hailstorm that tore up a lot of stuff in town. Since then, we’ve been performing at McMahon in different places because we had no space to do our theater.”

Flooding issues

Being near Flipper’s Ditch, a historical landmark beginning at Fort Sill, the John Denney Playhouse is prone to flooding whenever there’s heavy rain.

“As an organization, for many years that’s been a hurdle we’ve had to face,” Pendergraft said. “There’s a canal behind our building on the east side that is a project that they did back in the WPA from FDR’S New Deal works projects. It doesn’t stop them from making changes, but it definitely complicates the process. When there’s something historical that’s associated with these things, the regulations around making changes to it … they don’t know what it’s going to do down the road.”

Jolly said they are pretty good with flood prevention, using door dams and sandbags to keep flooding at a minimum. With the new roof and use of special equipment, they have a plan to battle flooding.

They won’t be “underwater” for long, though.

“We’re going to, over the course of about five years, make some investment in the building to get it to where, hopefully, it doesn’t flood like that anymore,” Pendergraft said.

Armory move discussed

There’s been talk about potentially moving the LCT to the old National Guard armory. Pendergraft said it’s a “long-term project.”

“The tricky thing with that is that it’s under the care of the McMahon Auditorium Authority and its partnership with the Lawton Arts and Humanities Council,” Pendergraft said. “It is still, I believe, the intention that the City of Lawton is working to repair and refurbish the National Guard Armory into a theater space. But on city projects, there’s a lot of work that goes into them. Unfortunately, the building is in a very rough state.”

Pendergraft said it will take a lot of funding and time to fix the armory.

“Right now, we can’t rely on the armory to do our season,” Pendergraft said. “We want to do art and offer entertainment for our community now, which is why we’re going back into our old home.”

Through partnerships with the City of Lawton, and other “wonderful” people, the building is being repaired and will be up and running near the end of September, according to Pendergraft.

Jolly said if they are still repairing before the start of the season, they will move the first play to McMahon Memorial Auditorium.

With that being said, they introduced the start of the 2024-2025 season to be Sept. 27, starting with the play “Godspell.” The play is about a group of people who are chosen to be the followers of Jesus Christ in modern times.

“It’s a classic, people will know it and love it,” Pendergraft said. “It had a very famous movie from the ‘70s. It’s great for all ages and all audience members.”

The next play will be “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” starting Nov. 15, Pendergraft said.

For more information, go to LCT’s Facebook page or call them at (580) 355-1600.