When Kathy Blomberg was a child, summers meant trips to North-central Wisconsin.
“We came up every summer … my grandmother lived up here” Blomberg said. “My dad was a Chicago firefighter, and the day we got out of school, we came up to Wisconsin. We stayed all summer.”
As an adult, Kathy moved to Wisconsin permanently, where she lived with her husband and five children.
“The marriage didn’t work, but I stayed with my five kids and raised them all here,” Kathy remembered. “In my back of my head, I always wanted to have a resort, and have this like I had when I was growing up.”
Eventually, Kathy got married again, this time to a man skilled in carpentry. The recent couple caught a deal on a plot of land, where they built a house, built rental cabins, even opening a restaurant in Kathy’s living room.
While she spent her days working at what came to be called the High Point Resort, Kathy started spending her nights on local community theater.
“I got a script called ‘Aunt Mamie from Minnesota, and we started a theater group in the town of Ogema, seven years ago,” Kathy said. “We got people for the play. It was unbelievably good.”
She also travelled around Wisconsin, to watch other community theater companies.
“I went to see the play ‘Don’t Hug Me I’m Pregnant’ at Fanny Hill in Eau Claire and thought ‘I absolutely love this play … and I have to do this play,’” Kathy said. “I had many people say ‘It’s a musical, you can’t do a musical.”
Kathy didn’t listen. Instead, she recruited some musically-inclined neighbors to start their own musical dinner theater. The location: Kathy’s High Point Village resort. Each night’s performance begins with supper at the restaurant in Kathy’s house. Then, audience members catch an ATV ride uphill to a gigantic ski cabin, where the show begins.
“My life is kind of stressful with the restaurant, but when I go on stage it’s … I’m somebody else,” Kathy said. “I absolutely love it.”
