This led to a reprise of the show, along with two other one-acts, at the Little Theater of Corona del Mar High School, which became the first of nine ICT venues. It was followed a few months later by the first full-length play, Neil Simon's "Come Blow Your Horn." These two shows made up the "Embryo Season" of early 1970.

The 1970-71 season began with "A Shot in the Dark," which ended ICT's brief history at Corona del Mar High. The theater group had obtained the use of the Humanities Hall Playhouse at UC Irvine, where "Night of January 16th" ushered in the UCI era in the fall of 1970.

During ICT's four years at UCI, some of the finest plays in the theater were presented, including "Death of a Salesman," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "You Can't Take It With You," which marked a changing of the guard at ICT. Dow left the group after two seasons and the director of "You Can't Take It With You," Tom Titus, began his 32-year stint as managing director.

Titus was no stranger to ICT. He had played the leading roles in the theater's productions of "Come Blow Your Horn" and "Arsenic and Old Lace." He inherited a theater mired in a four-figure debt, most of which was erased with "You Can't Take It With You." The 1972-73 season saw the group start over, financially, from square one.

ICT gained momentum during the UCI years, staging critically acclaimed productions of "Dear Friends," "The Desperate Hours," "What the Butler Saw" and "Everything in the Garden." But the university needed its theater back and, after the 1973-74 season, ICT was looking for a home.

The theater found no available sites in Irvine, and eventually settled on the tiny Actor's Playbox at Golden West College, where the 1974-75 season unfolded. When that venue became unavailable, ICT relocated for one show ("The Bad Seed") at the Fountain Valley Community Theater, then became a temporary tenant at an old scout house in Costa Mesa for five productions, including the highly praised drama "When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?"

Interrupting the string of Costa Mesa shows was a joint production with Golden West College in the main GWC theater, Jason Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "That Championship Season," in 1976, which Titus regards as his magnum opus as a director.

When the bulldozers approached the scout house, ICT latched onto an abandoned church in Newport Beach which had been taken over by the city. Newport would later turn it into the Newport Theater Arts Center, but not before ICT staged "Luv" and the first post-Broadway production of "First One Asleep, Whistle" there in 1977.

For the next year and a half, the Irvine Community Theater existed on paper only, with no performance venues to be found. Then the city of Irvine interceded with University High School and ICT produced a five-show 1979 season at the school's Little Theater.

This made eight locations in 10 years for ICT, and number nine was right around the corner -- Turtle Rock Community Park, which would be home from that day (January, 1980) to this. The opening show at Turtle Rock was a world premiere, Elaine Mullin's "Ignore the Man Behind the Screen."

Turtle Rock was not an ideal theater location -- the stage was small and sets had to be struck after each performance -- but enthusiasm and imagination turned the auditorium into an effective forum for comedy and drama. A highlight of the first year at Turtle Rock was ICT's 10th anniversary production, Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Another world premiere, Jack Sharkey's "Par for the Corpse," followed in 1981, and in 1982 ICT opened the sliding rear doors of the stage to the outside world for its staging of "Inherit the Wind." This device also was used effectively for such shows as "All My Sons" and "Picnic."

Technically difficult productions such as "The Shadow Box," "Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Playboy of the Western World" were mounted successfully on the Turtle Rock stage. The amphitheater immediately to the rear of the theater was employed on three occasions for fund-raising Shakespearean productions.

In October of 1993, the Irvine Community Theater marked its 100th production with the dramatic comedy "Goodbye Freddy."

Over its 20 years at Turtle Rock Park, ICT has endured numerous setbacks from the city of Irvine -- cutting its production schedule from five shows a year to four, slicing performances from four weekends to three and seeing rehearsal time cut from three hours a night to two. An in-kind grant of over $2,000 a year to subsidize overtime use was discontinued.

This led to displeasure with the facility and, when the city announced plans to increase overtime fees from $33 an hour to $80, the ICT board of directors voted in 1998 to sever its ties with Turtle Rock Park. However, ICT president Wil Thompson was able to persuade the city to rescind the extra fees, and even obtained a small subsidy from the city.

The board reconsidered and voted to continue the 1998-99 season with the three plays scheduled for 1999, missing only the season-opening production in October, 1998.

Wil Thompson, who had led ICT as president for some 20 years, passed away in 2000 at the age of 77. Other longtime ICT stalwarts who have left us in recent years were Chuck Benton, Tracy Godfrey and Art Winslow. These and others were memorialized when the Irvine theater mounted its reprise production of “The Shadow Box” in February, 2002.

That production featured performances by Tom Titus (who also directed) and Mary Benton, both of whom were present at the creation of ICT in 1970. Time marches on, but for these two, it appears to have stood still.

ICT is continually looking for a few good people, both on stage and off, to volunteer their time and talent. One of the real “keepers” of the past couple of seasons has been Susan Levinstein, who performed in “Don’t Drink the Water” and “Night Watch,” then directed a very successful local premiere of “All This and Moonlight,” and joined our board as associate director.

Nettie Hershman continues to lead ICT into 2005, after returning us financial viability following the success of "West Side Story", and the introduction of the Laguna Hills location.

THROUGH THE YEARS WITH ICT