SEQUIM — Olympic Theatre Arts Executive Director David Herbelin is stepping down from his role from the community nonprofit.
The 51-year-old jack-of-all-trades in the entertainment industry plans to spend more time with his family as he continues his fourth round of treatment for colorectal cancer that has spread throughout his body.
“(OTA’s board of trustees have) known that I’ve had cancer ever since the day I was diagnosed back in spring of ’22, and I had just been hired in September of ’21,” he said.
“So I was maybe six months on the job or so, and all of this went down and I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? I just moved here. I just got a new job, and just started to do the family dream.’”
Part of that dream included buying a home in Sequim and going on to start a lavender business, Old Barn Lavender Company, 9785 Old Olympic Highway.
Steve Rodeman, OTA’s board president, said Herbelin was a transformative leader during his time as executive director.
“His relentless dedication to making OTA a cornerstone of this community by consistently improving our experiences with the performing arts has left a strong foundation for this theater and many great memories of his time with us,” he said.
Herbelin will carry on as a part-time consultant for a few months, Rodeman said, to ensure the projects he’s involved with are completed and to help as needed with sharing his expertise.
OTA’s board of trustees soon will make a decision about posting the executive director position, he said.
Treatment, prognosis
Discussions about a succession plan date back to October, Herbelin said.
His oncologist made a determination in June that his third round of treatment likely would be the last until they determined a pill, rather than more infusions, could serve as a fourth round of treatment starting in November to help improve his day-to-day life.
He has a CT scan in a few weeks to see how it’s going.
“It’s not going to stop it. There’s nothing that’s going to stop it. It’s just about slowing it down and extending life and improving quality of life for as long as possible,” Herbelin said of the cancer.
He recalled having his first surgery two weeks before the opening of the first Lavender Melodrama, an annual summer musical each July that Herbelin writes with jokes and songs about Sequim and the Olympic Peninsula’s many quirks. He recently finished his first draft for this summer’s show.
Through the treatments and appointments, Herbelin said all of the doctors, nurses and staff at Olympic Medical Cancer Center in Sequim and at clinics in Silverdale and Tacoma have been amazing.
“I’ve got to say the nicest people in the world I’ve ever met are oncology nurses,” he said. “They just know that everybody there is going through a bad time, and they’re trying their best to just keep patients as comfortable and happy as possible.”
Herbelin said he didn’t ask for a prognosis for a long time but eventually he did and is proud to say he’s outlived it a couple of times over.
Herbelin said his oncologist, Dr. Martin Palmer, told him he’s never met someone with such a positive attitude and so much hope after getting so many unfair deals with the disease.
Family and OTA are the two things that have helped him persevere, Herbelin said, and leaving the nonprofit is not something he wants to do as it’s helped give him purpose and a sense that his work is helping people smile and laugh.
With his resignation planned, Herbelin said he wanted to make sure big projects were done or planned out for a year to give the organization its own “runway” in cooperation with staff and volunteers. That included lining up directors for shows in 2026, having advertisements and press releases ready for the year, and finishing the roof project as part of a half-million-dollar campaign.
“Coincidentally, it’s being completed at the same time I’m leaving, so that worked out just perfectly,” he said.
When he started at OTA, trustees tasked him with eliminating the illusion that it was a clique while creating more awareness for the theater’s offerings.
“We really worked on making sure the public knows this is their playground,” Herbelin said.
As for awareness, he said when staff and volunteers look at each audience, they don’t recognize most attendees, and he said that’s great.
Building the show
OTA has continued a trend for Herbelin loving every job he’s ever had.
“I have lived one of the most fulfilling lives in that regard (and) with the exception of working for Chili’s restaurant for one day, I’ve loved every single job in my life,” Herbelin said.
Being OTA’s executive director has allowed both sides of his brain to fire simultaneously at full power, fueling both his creative and problem-solving sides.
“It’s been amazing,” he said.
Herbelin spent most of his life in Southern California working in some form of entertainment, whether in comedy clubs, leading summer camps, acting, working with theme parks or owning an escape room business.
He’s originally from Solvang, which became the model for Washington’s Leavenworth. He moved during high school to Irvine, and he said Sequim was the first place to feel like Solvang to him with its charm.
Through his career, he has accumulated a laundry list of accomplishments. When he was 18, Herbelin said he was hired as a sound operator for improv comedy clubs, and he later became a general manager, working with the top comedians of the world.
He was tasked with helping to bring Second City Improv from Chicago to Los Angeles, and he’s taught acting to comedians.
Herbelin also contracted with Walt Disney Imagineering for 20-plus years, writing and directing new pieces for theme parks and parties that highlighted their technology for various shows, including “Star Wars,” Marvel, Pixar brands and more.
One show that he knows of that’s still going includes Remy the rat from “Ratatouille” appearing on a cart with a waiter controlling its movement.
His wife Melissa, also an OTA employee, worked in many roles for Disney, too, such as head of entertainment, head of parade maintenance, head of the character department, and her last position before she moved to Sequim was head of the parade maintenance department.
Herbelin ran multiple businesses in Anaheim, near Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland, including Puzzlemazement, an escape room company, Edutainment, a summer camp company, and a magic shop that he admittedly said failed but taught him a lot.
The magic shop’s building went on to become his first escape room “The Dollhouse,” where they lined walls with thousands of dolls.
“It blew up overnight and it was an instant success, and within a week, it was sold out three months ahead of time,” Herbelin said.
He continued to run the businesses while living in Sequim and simultaneously working for OTA until his cancer diagnosis. Herbelin offered the business to his oldest daughter but she declined, so the family closed it in 2023. They also gave the camp supplies to his business partner for free.
The Herbelins purchased their home in 2017 and he moved to Sequim in 2021 to start work at OTA. Melissa moved up the following year once they sold their home in California.
The couple considered starting their own businesses like an escape room and summer camp offerings, but they found permitting and construction requirements through Clallam County to be too costly. They advocated to county officials for less stringent guidelines for farms like theirs when the county revised its agricultural access use.
Herbelin also asked Clallam County commissioners to seek a cultural access tax of one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax to support nonprofits to advance access to areas, such as the performing arts, to offer free or reduced tickets and to increase ADA-accessibility. He said it’s his biggest regret not seeing it passed during his tenure.
He said even on his hardest days at OTA, he’s been able to help people fulfill their dreams and give them a positive experience.
“The theater is making it so that, when you leave our property, you leave either happier or better off than how you first walked in, and that’s my job is to ensure that,” Herbelin said.
Herbelin said people can still make amazing changes.
“I had cancer the whole time I was there,” he said.
He lives with Melissa, daughter Sabrina and his brother Mike. They have savings from their previous careers and said they’re not seeking financial support, but they are not opposed to the community’s support, which has been offered to them many times via theater supporters, they said.
“Bottom line is, we’re figuring it out,” Herbelin said.
For more about Olympic Theatre Arts, call 360-683-7326 or visit OlympicTheatreArts.org.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
