Theresa Yvonne didn’t get a “B” in biology because she liked dissecting frogs.

“I got a ‘B’ in biology because my mom would have never let me audition for a show if I didn’t keep my grades up,” Yvonne said on a recent afternoon at Federal Way City Hall. “So that became my hook and she knew it and she used it wisely as a good parent should.”

She started working for the city two weeks ago following a nationwide search as the new executive director for the Performing Arts and Conference Center. Though the $32.7 million, 700-seat facility will not be complete until late 2016, the city brought Yvonne on board a year early to set up programming and to get things ready before it opens.

“I’m settling in,” said the California transplant. “I’m still carrying an umbrella, which I’ve figured out in a very short period of time that no one carries an umbrella out here, so eventually I’ll get there.”

Yvonne grew up near Redding, California as a “theater kid,” playing roles such as a dancer in “Fiddler on the Roof” in high school. When she was 15 years old, she saw Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s “Inherit the Wind” during a field trip to Oregon — and was hooked.

“I was pretty much done after that,” Yvonne recalled. “I was signed, sealed, delivered and done.”

She went on to get her bachelor’s degree in drama at Sacramento State before landing her first job as artistic director for the Riverfront Playhouse in Redding, California. It was there she realized she had a “business head.”

She said the theater would perform shows, such as “Oleanna,” a two-character play by David Mamet about a relationship between a university professor and one of his female students, who accuses him of sexual exploitation.

“There was a lot of F-bombs and like 20 people in the audience,” Yvonne recalled, equating the experience to chefs in the kitchen. “The presentation, the plate that would come out and is served to you is beautiful. The mess [the artists] made in the kitchen was like, oh my gosh. So it was one of those things where I really realized I had a business sense in that there’s nothing wrong with doing those more gritty shows, but we can’t run them for six weeks. We need to do ‘Barefoot in the Park’ by Neil Simon, run that for six weeks and then we can do a David Mamet [production] for two weekends. I realized I had this business sense along with this artistic sense.”

Yvonne got her Master of Arts in organizational management and went on to work in various roles at several facilities in California, including as a heritage and cultural arts supervisor in Dublin, an Arts Commission director in Stockton, an arts manager in Tracy and a performing arts manager for the Lancaster Performing Arts Center.

She said two things attracted her to the Federal Way executive director position. She is excited about the performing arts side of things due to her background in drama and she’s also excited that it’s a new project.

“There’s a sense of ownership when you take it from dirt to a glorious building. When it’s all done, there is such a sense of accomplishment — and by no means is that just me — but it feels really good … and there’s something to be said for watching that happen and being a part of that whole thing.”

She hopes the Federal Way Performing Arts and Conference Center will become the “community center” where memories will be made, including weddings, someone’s first dance, quinceañera celebrations, plays and more.

“So that first year is going to be creating those collective community memories for the creative community when everybody comes and uses it,” Yvonne said. “Those are pivotal moments in people’s lives and we get to be a part of that in a sense. We get to facilitate that and make that happen.”

She is also confident that the performing arts center in Federal Way will spur economic development for the city. Similar to the city of Lancaster’s revitalization plan that centered on the Lancaster Performing Arts Center, the Federal Way facility is also expected to bring businesses to the city center.

“Let me put it to you this way, and you can look this up on Americans for the Arts, every person that comes to a performance spends $24 on the average on auxiliary spending, when they buy a ticket,” she noted. “So every single person that comes in here is either going to go out to dinner, they’re going to buy dessert, they’re going to buy gas, they’re going to pay for a babysitter … The arts are just a huge economic driver and that’s one of the things that’s exciting about this facility is it has all the right elements to make that successful.”

She also believes the new Federal Way facility will add to the arts in the region, not create competition, as some opponents have expressed.

“I don’t think any other performing arts facility is competition. You have to work together. The more restaurants you have on a boulevard, the better they all do,” she said. “So the idea that any other performing arts center is competition, I don’t subscribe to that.”

She said the Lancaster facility was 30 miles from another performing arts center in Santa Clarita and she regularly worked with them so that certain performers could maximize their stay in the region.

She also plans to be sensitive to the large low-income population in Federal Way and will offer different ticketing prices. In Lancaster, for example, she helped develop an arts for youth program where they offered kids and families $5 shows during the day.

“There’s ways to do that; companies will underwrite that,” she said. “There’s ways to have a range. Everything isn’t going to be a top dollar ticket and everything isn’t going to be $12 either. It’s going to run the gamut. That’s my job, that juggling.”

She looks forward to meeting with the community and has already met with members of the Federal Way Coalition of the Performing Arts, many of whom said they are happy to have a “place they can call home.”