Virginia’s Li’l Ole Opry, also known as Donk’s Theater, is marking its 50th anniversary this year, looking back on five decades of entertainment by top-notch local country music performers and hosting such nationally famous special guests as Dolly Parton, Porter Waggoner, Kitty Wells, and others.
Company president Lynda Smith said this year is also the 100th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, which the Li’l Ole Opry was modeled after. Special shows featuring “faces from the past” are planned throughout the year, she said, beginning with the first show of the season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Mathews High School. (See related article here.)
Lynda recalled growing up in Donk’s Theater (destroyed by a weather event in 2016) after her dad, Jimmy “Uncle Jimmy Wickham” Smith, decided to turn the former movie theater at Hudgins into a live performance venue in 1975 in partnership with his sister, Harriet Farmer, his niece, Joanna Mullis, and, not long after, a second sister, Betsy ...