SEQUIM — Just two pieces of furniture came from Puerta Vallarta to Sequim: the piano and the dining room table.
Their owner, Kathleen Hennen, had a new life to build beyond those two basics.
And today, Hennen will open her new home near Sequim to others who share her love of music and good company.
Broadway in the Barn, a tiny theater venture, will present Ol’ Man River, a revue of Jerome Kern songs from Showboat and other Broadway musicals.
Hennen, 61, moved to the North Olympic Peninsula from Puerta Vallarta in January.
During their years in Mexico, she and her husband established Spotlight Productions, a community theater group that raised money for local children’s charities.
Hennen’s husband of 27 years, who was known as F.M., died of cancer in March 2003.
She continued producing musicals and children’s revues, but due to a heart ailment, she needed to live somewhere that wasn’t so hot so much of the year.
A Texas native, she’d long fantasized about living in a log house in the Pacific Northwest.
Hennen and F.M. had talked of going north and finding a piece of property with such a house on it — maybe with a barn where they could put on shows.
“It was a dream we shared,” she said.
“And here I came,” late last year, to the Kirner Road log home that had a garage.
Soon after moving in, Hennen painted it to look like a barn.
“I’m obviously supposed to be here,” she said.
When Hennen started talking this spring about her Broadway in the Barn idea, local singers listened — and auditioned.
Susanne Severeid and John Carson, both of Sequim, won starring roles in Ol’ Man River alongside Hennen, who is herself a classically trained singer, pianist and violinist.
Carson, a baritone, will sing the title song.
