The Best of Federal Way is a great time to celebrate community staples that bring something unique to the region.

One nominee this year also brings something unexpected – a professional level theater experience at a church.

St. Luke’s Theatre Company performs in a sanctuary and uses theater as one of their vehicles for community outreach, but their shows are most often secular and everyone is welcome to audition and attend. There are two main events each year – a late fall show and a summer drama camp.

“Everyone’s surprised when they come because they’re expecting a church and they don’t realize it’s actually a professional show,” Loretta Deranleau Howard said. She is the Theatre Director now, but has been directing shows at St. Luke’s since her 2005 production of “The Music Man,” and will direct her 14th production at St. Luke’s this fall.

The low ticket price and performance location often leave audience members happily surprised at the quality of the shows.

“You have professional actors in our area and because they have families or they’ve gotten better jobs, they can’t work in the professional houses, but they still want to do theater,” Deranleau Howard said. At St Luke’s, their willingness to be flexible with people’s schedules, and the short run time for the shows, make it an attractive stage for actors with extensive professional acting experience.

In their most recent production, the performance of “Cinderella” sold over 1,800 tickets for just eight shows. There are only two paid positions in the team and the rest are volunteers.

The theater productions started with a few religious performances every now and then, then developed into a kids summer drama camp. St. Luke’s Summer Drama Camp began in 1997 with a production of “Snow White” written by Greg Gamble and Lee Howard. As more kids started to age out of the drama camp, the program started to grow to include more consistent fall performances.

While the summer camp productions are typically plays with some possible musical additions, the fall program is always a musical.

“People really enjoy musical theater. And our whole program started because we had such talented singers within the church,” Deranleau Howard said.

The overall mission is “to provide entertaining family friendly theater,” Deranleau Howard said. That being said, they do choose the message of the musical carefully. Deranleau Howard added that “any time we can send messages of any kind about caring and love and family and friendship and community. That’s what we’re all about, doing that.”

When selecting shows, they also try to provide different kinds of opportunities, like selecting a show with a large ensemble of roles for children one year, then having a show with more roles for adults the next.

The theater production is family-friendly in more ways than one. In multiple productions, parents and their kids have all had roles in the same show.

One year Deranleau Howard said she “really wanted both Jim and Amy’s talent on stage,” and the actors would respond “what are we going to do with with the kids? Are they just going to sit here during rehearsal?” The solution – Deranleau Howard said “I’ll use all three of them, bring them on over, why not!”

Deranleau Howard and her husband Lee Howard have also performed together multiple times on the St Luke’s stage. Their first production at St. Luke’s was in the Fall of 1997 when he played Ebenezer and she played Tom Jenkins in the musical “Scrooge”. They were also onstage together and Loretta choreographed productions in 2003 (Annie!) and 2004 (The Wizard of Oz).

Mr. Howard is still involved as well, writing scripts for the summer drama camp.

Kendra Breyer does Marketing and Publicity for St Luke’s and first got involved with the program as a teen volunteer for the summer camp.

Now her kids have been involved. “My oldest didn’t even like opening birthday presents in front of people,” Breyer said of her daughter. After participating in the program, her daughter scored the lead in a later production.

Tammy Fossett is one of the stage managers for St Luke’s and prefers to enjoy the magic from behind the scenes rather than from the stage. “I grew up in a family that loved theater. We always had Broadway tickets. We always went to the theater. But I couldn’t do that as a parent when I had kids, I just couldn’t afford it,” Fossett said. “One of the things that I just absolutely love is the mission to bring affordable theater arts in general to the community because it’s the first thing that schools get rid of.”

Photo provided by St Luke’s. Becky Dahl, Stephen Barbarossa, David Acuna and Heather Means in our 2016 production of GODSPELL.

David Acuna, Jason Church, Phil Edwards and Jeremy Force as the Barbershop Quartet in our 2022 production of “The Music Man.” Photo provided by St Luke’s.

Danielle Sumida and Madeline Hiller as the butler and the baker in our 2018 production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Aimee Hong in “Working” in 2013. She is now the current Music Director and grew up in Federal Way. Hong is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School. Photo provided by St Luke’s.

Theatre Director Loretta Deranleau Howard, Marketing and Publicity manager Kendra Breyer, Stage Manager Tammy Fossett and Shalena Putnam of St Luke’s Theatre Company. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / The Mirror