Kathy Wygle. Photo by David N. Seelig 

Leading lady

Kathy Wygle's whirling world of theatre

By Pat Murphy

Second-guessers curious about the mystical role of Fate could dwell with relish on Kathy Wygle’s life, asking repeatedly: Had “what if” fateful moments not interrupted her life, where might she be today and doing what?

So far, Fate has been good to her and those who have felt her touch.

The most critical “what-if” moment was 36 years ago when she not only was spared from death, but providentially was kept around to provide the vision and oomph for what today is the Wood River Valley’s flourishing theater community.

Her 1969 incident was shattering and horrific: While walking along Sun Valley Road at dusk, then-19-year-old Wygle was struck by a car. She most certainly would have died on the spot from injuries.

Except, Fate interceded with one of those inexplicable twists.

The driver of the car that struck Wygle was a nurse who didn’t panic. Moritz Hospital, now defunct, was on the Sun Valley Lodge grounds only minutes away. The nurse-driver gathered up critically injured Wygle, bundled her into the car and rushed her to life-saving emergency care.

Although her spleen and bladder were severely damaged, and she underwent many surgeries and months of rehabilitation, Wygle survived.

Did she ever. Today, instead of showing any lingering signs of her near-death experience, the effervescent Wygle is a literal blur of energy and activity, bewildering younger associates with her hunger for more projects.

Those who’ve watched and shared in Wygle’s emergence from relative anonymity into a major community cultural influence over three-plus decades regard her, at a minimum, as the “leading lady” of the area’s theater world.

From waitress, to bartender and bar manager, then pet store owner, real estate sales person along the way, partner in the Creekside and Sawtooth Club restaurants and, finally, the one who salvaged the defunct nexStage Theatre on Ketchum’s Main Street, Wygle is the ideal exemplar of someone “working their way up” with sheer drive, focused single-mindedly on objectives.

But always, there was a “what-if” in her life: What if the driver of the car hadn’t been a nurse? What if Wygle had perished on Sun Valley Road years ago? Would theater have emerged in the valley and as energetically and as soon?

And more what-ifs. What if she had remained in the upscale surroundings of suburban Medina, Wash., in the comfortable family setting?

What if she had continued studies as a mathematics whiz in a University of Washington honors program and become a computer programmer? What if she hadn’t developed an itch to ski Sun Valley and once here discovered instantly, as she now recalls, “This is where I wanted to be”?

What she found in Sun Valley was a new sense of independence and personal worth, literally an escape from the Seattle area where she “felt diminished.”

The move meant forfeiting her high-achiever status as a college debater, gymnast, top competitive ski racer and Honor Society inductee. Her sisters also sought brighter futures elsewhere—Jan is a Ketchum attorney; Patsy is a New York actress, and Gail is a Ketchum real estate agent.

In Idaho, Wygle began a slow, but relentless, climb from bottom-rung jobs through a series of progressively improved opportunities until she finally broke loose to pursue her dream—performing theater.

The chance came when, in almost a rat-a-tat-tat series of life changes, she was bought out of her restaurant lease, married, acquired her dog and two horses and stopped drinking.

Laughing Stock Theater, a community theater with open auditions, was born in make-do surroundings of Louie’s, a steepled wooden church-turned-restaurant.

With an eye on the future needs of valley theater for performers, as well as a new generation of big-hearted supporters, Wygle, with the nexStage Theatre Board, launched a summer performing arts workshop at The Community School for 40 to 50 young people. In addition, for 14 years, Wygle has operated and taught at weeklong Camp Little Laugh north of Ketchum in the woodlands of Easley for 40 youngsters between 8 and 15 years.

Soon, the annual two-week performance of Shakespeare in the Forest Service Park was added to the prodigious Wygle schedule.

But the centerpiece of Wygle’s sprawling realm is nexStage Theatre, officially Sun Valley Performing Arts Center/nexStage Theatre—7,000 square feet of theater with a stage and a bank of 264 retractable seats, plus an adjoining 5,000 square feet of warehouse she plans to remodel for dance classes, improv shows, and a classroom for performing arts.

Once an auto dealership, the nexStage building was bought by benefactors Tim and Mary Mott, then leased to the Performing Arts Center for $1 per year. In addition to nearly two dozen performances in 2005 by various theater groups, nexStage is booked solid with income-producing events—dance performances, proms, music, film, classes, retail shows, fundraisers and parties. In 2003, nexStage hosted 165 events.

With a staff of four and a budget of $300,000—including a $7,300 grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts—Wygle has helped nurse theater into a year-round tradition, spawning several new theater companies.

If Wygle has shown her stuff as a daring, successful business woman, wonder of wonders, she’s also periodically abandoned office paperwork to direct 20 plays and 11 musicals over the past 28 years, join the casts of six stage productions, act in two films—including Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” shot north of Ketchum—teach theater classes and, almost inevitably for actors, perform in two beer commercials for television.

She also personally makes the pitch for Idaho financial grants.

She even enlisted her husband, Barry Irwin, a ski patrolman on Baldy, into theater roles: He “played” the invisible giant rabbit in “Harvey,” and remained unmoving on stage as a corpse in “Unexpected Guest.”

Understandably eternally trim because of her pace,
the 5 foot 4 inch Wygle conducts business from a compact office at a desk overlooking Ketchum’s Main Street or from an oblong table in the nexStage lobby. Always close by is Prika, her devoted black and white collie-type dog.

The most lasting first impressions of Wygle are a youthful cheeriness that never flickers, her quick smile, what one friend describes as “post-modern pixie hairstyle,” and an appealing, slightly raspy voice that in a chauvinistic, politically incorrect era would’ve been called sexy or seductive.

A visitor might also note she remains unperturbed amid bedlam as one nexStage event closes and another prepares to open, answering questions from stage hands, taking phone calls and dealing with an occasional meltdown of the office computer.

Theater is more than a business and personal passion for Wygle: Theater and performing arts symbolize a community’s soul.

“Culture bonds a community. People are proud to have a theater in their town,” she says with the verve of a missionary, which accounts for the “Arts Advocate of the Year” award in 2003 from the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber and Visitors Bureau.

She ascribes the growth of theater in the Wood River Valley to the “quality of people who’ve experienced culture elsewhere and don’t want to give it up.” Theater training also gives young people self-confidence as they learn to express themselves on stage.

Longtime friends are unsparing in their devotion for this can-do spirit.

“She instills hope, inspires people,” says Chris Millspaugh, director of The Community Library’s regional history department, journalist, historian and occasional performer in local theater.

Longtime friend and set designer Patti Ahrens, who by day creates custom designed specialty cakes, considers Wygle’s long suit to be her ability to “see things in people and bring things out that people don’t know they have in themselves,” a possible explanation for the number of unlikely eager amateurs auditioning for theater productions.

For actor Robert Rais, who also is nexStage’s director of education and programming, Wygle is the “leading lady of theater” in the valley.

One of the beneficiaries of Wygle’s pioneering efforts is David Blampied, artistic director of New Theater Company, who first met Wygle when they performed in the 1978 Laughing Stock Theater production of “Mame.”

“This is the perfect place for creative arts,” muses Blampied. “The open space, being able to get out and away—that’s missing in New York and Los Angeles.”

Blampied foresees further growth for theater here. He believes summer and winter theater festivals that attract resident actors and writers would create a new audience of visitors.

It is a bright future, attributable in no small part to the valley’s leading lady. •