We Don't Sell Tropical Fish

People frequently ask me how CSDC got started and why we named the company Crystal Sea Drama. I will admit that the "Sea" in it has caused some confusion. I regularly receive catalogs meant for pet stores that sell fish. I would think that the word "Drama" would give them a clue that we're not a pet store, but I digress.

When I was in college, I thought about someday starting a drama company. After I got married, I had a dream one night that I was the director of a company called Crystal Sea. We were rehearsing in a large brown room with many windows. When I woke up, the dream was so real, that I just knew that God was calling me to start a company called Crystal Sea. I expected it to happen immediately, but instead, my husband and I started our family, and I stopped doing theatre.

Throughout the years of having and raising our nine children, I never forgot about that dream. It didn't look like it would ever come to fruition, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. When my youngest son was two, I found out that a local homeschool co-op was looking for a theatre teacher. Two of our daughters were wanting to do theatre, so teaching a drama class would allow them to be able to do what they were wanting to do, and it let me get back to doing something that I loved. so I contacted the head of the co-op, Marla Ripps, who was happy to have me take over their theatre class.

At the end of the year, we were rehearsing scenes for our Showcase performance. I suddenly realized that the room we were rehearsing in was the same room that had been in my dream twenty years earlier! I told Marla about that, and she said that she had always wanted to start a drama company. Being an engineer, she had no theatre experience at all, but she always felt the Lord was leading her in that direction. So, in the fall of 2002, the two of us became the founders of Crystal Sea Drama Company.

Our name comes from Revelation 4, verses 6 and 10. "Also, in front of the throne was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. . . . they cast their crowns before the throne." We receive our talents from the Lord as a gift. We give our talents - our crowns - back to the Lord; we cast our crowns before the throne.

While our name may not be one that you would expect a theater to have, for us, it's a reminder that everything we do is for our Lord and God. We strive to be excellent in our craft to bring Him glory, and to take what we've learned and use it throughout our lives to continue to honor Him, whether we are working in theater professionally, or we are in business or in ministry or being a stay at home parent.

We had no idea when we started our company in 2002 that we would grow to have our own studio and multiple classes and productions a year. We are grateful to the Lord for the last fifteen years, and look forward to many more years in service to Him. I hope that you will join us, either as students or as audience members, as we cast our crowns before our God and Savior.