Listen & Be Heard Network Arts News

Mark your calendars for Solano College Theatre’s first ever Halloween Spooktacular, a scary, but family appropriate, haunted house. The historic Lawler House, at 714 Main Street in Downtown Suisun City (next to the Harbor Theatre), will play host to childhood fears on Thursday, Oct. 30 and Friday, Oct. 31 from 5 to 10 p.m. From 5 to 6:30 each night, the haunted house will be rated G and appropriate for younger children. From 7 to 10 p.m., the haunted house will become PG-13 and not suitable for the faint of heart. Admission to the house is just $2 if you are wearing a costume and $5 if you are not. Be sure to visit the house on Friday evening as part of the Downtown Suisun City Halloween Parade, sponsored by the Suisun City Firefighters Association and the Suisun City Historic Waterfront Business Improvement District. Backpacks, bags and jackets will not be permitted into the house. Check out Solano College Theatre’s website, www.solanocollegetheatre.org, for more information.

The haunted house will showcase the talents of Solano Community College Theatre Arts department students. The house is completely conceived, designed and executed by students from the Stagecraft class, which explores props, special effects and all other technical aspects of theatre. Students in the Stage Makeup class will create the ghastly appearances of the actors appearing in the haunted house. SCC Theatre Arts students, as well as students from Buckingham Charter Magnet High School Service Corps, Vacaville High School and Solano Youth Theatre’s Teen Touring Company, will appear as the characters bringing childhood fears to life.

The Lawler house is the oldest surviving dwelling in Suisun City. Sometime around 1857, the large two-story ranch house was built on the Suisun prairie, south of what would become Highway 12. In 1947, John Lawler purchased the more than 2,000-acre ranch and had the old house remodeled to reflect the Italianate style of the 1875s, similar to that of Mount Vernon. Lawler died in 1960, but his sons took turns living in the house until 1976 when home builders The Hofmann Company bought the ranch for development. Not wanting to destroy the home, Hofmann offered the house, including a small amount of money to renovate it, to Suisun City. The city passed on the deal. Once it was known that the building was unoccupied, vandals, souvenir hunters and began the systematic destruction of the old house. In 1978, concerned citizens organized to save the house. Eventually, in June of 1979, the house was moved by barge to its current location on Main Street. A few years later, renovation of the house was complete, and small businesses took up residence in the new commercial property.