Community-Based Theater

by Kirk Woodward 

[Following his article on “Staged Readings” on 11 February 2026, Kirk Woodward, Rick On Theater’s most prolific guest-blogger (just shy of 150 posts out of 1,335, including several multi-parters), is back now with a piece on “Community-Based Theater.”  It’s a subject about which Kirk knows a great deal, having toiled in its fields—as an actor, director, playwright, composer, rehearsal and performance accompanist, and probably most of the jobs that exist in that arena—during the span of his theatrical career.

[This isn’t surprising, since Kirk lives in Little Falls in New Jersey’s Passaic County, which is right next to Essex County (where he used to live), about 60 miles and an hour-and-a-quarter drive or train ride west of New York City.  From my experience and observation, Essex County has an exceptional number of performance venues and theater companies, both professional and community-oriented.  One might even say that it’s a little theater-mad, so there’s a lot of theater activity and interest thereabouts. 

[Kirk, as you might expect from someone with that kind of credential, has some pretty firm ideas about CBT, as he dubs it in his post.  For one thing, he has a more inclusive definition of community-based theater than is perhaps standard for what is more generally known as “community theater.”  (I’ll let you all read for yourself what distinction Kirk makes between the two.)

[A little over a year-and-a-half ago, I posted an essay by Jaan Whitehead called “Art Will Out,” originally published in the October 2002 issue of American Theatre magazine (volume 19, number 8).  The repost was part of my occasional series on the regional theater in the United States, and Whitehead, a New York-based author, theater executive, and political theorist known for her work in the performing arts, had a great deal to say about community-based theater.  Here are significant passages on the subject:

[C]ommunity-based theatre [is] theatre deeply rooted in a particular community, which itself is an essential partner and collaborator in the work.  Not to be confused with the local amateur groups that are often called “community” theatres, the community-based theatres I am talking about are professional theatres, usually ensemble theatres, that choose to work and live in a particular community, articulating the voice of that community through their art.  Going back to the central connection between the art and the audience . . ., it is the artists who create and preserve this connection, . . . community-based theatre [devoting most of its creativity] to the integrity of the audience.

. . . .

[C]ommunity-based theatre . . . had its origins in the Depression [1929-39] but has experienced its main growth in the past two decades.  The Community Arts Network [a project active from 1999 through 2010 that promoted information exchange, research, and critical dialogue in the field of art] calls this “art made as a voice and a force within a specific community of place, spirit or tradition.”  The aim of community-based theatres is to become an indigenous part of the community, creating a theatrical voice for that community but also becoming one of its civic institutions, like schools and libraries.  Many of these theatres reach audiences that have never experienced theatre before, and the relationship that develops between the artists and their audiences is very alive, a process of mutual creativity.  And, although much of the work has intellectual roots in the ideas of the same thinkers who inspired the avant-garde such as [Antonin] Artaud [1896-1948; French dramatist, poet, actor, and artist who became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century avant-garde theater] and [Jerzy] Grotowski [1933-1999; visionary Polish theater director, teacher, and dramatic theorist; fundamentally redefined 20th-century performance], community-based theatres have added to their work other influences, such as commedia dell’arte [a form of improvised theater that originated in northern Italy in the 15th century and flourished across Europe through the 18th century], storytelling, folksongs and other more populist forms of expression.

[Aside from my caveat that Kirk uses more expansive criteria for community-based theaters, readers will find that Whitehead’s description of CBT’s in this country largely aligns with Kirk’s.]

I was proud of myself for inventing the term “community-based theater” (speaking about theater in the United States – conditions may differ in other countries).

Doing a Google search, I found that not only did I not come up with the term, but that it is widely used. Briefly overcoming my resistance to Artificial Intelligence (AI), here is a description that AI provides:

Community-based theater (CBT) involves local, non-professional groups using volunteers for actors and crew, focusing on accessible artistic participation, social connection, and entertainment for the public, often producing plays and musicals for fun, education, and to reflect local culture, distinct from professional theater by its amateur, volunteer-driven, and community-focused nature. 

Key Characteristics

 

•        Volunteer-Driven: Relies on unpaid actors, directors, and technical staff from the community.

•        Non-Professional: Primarily a social and artistic activity, not a paid profession.

•        Locally Focused: Often produces shows relevant to the community's interests and provides local arts engagement.

•        Accessible: Welcomes all experience levels, with some groups requiring no audition or experience.

•        Varied Scale: Ranges from small local troupes to large organizations like the Omaha Community Playhouse (OCP; Omaha, Nebraska). 

Types of Community Theater

 

•        Traditional Community Theater: Non-profits staging musicals and plays for general audiences, like AfterWork Theater (New York City) or Spring Lake Theatre (Spring Lake, New Jersey).

•        Civic/Participatory Theater: Programs like Public Works at The Public Theater (New York City) that deeply involve community members in creating ambitious shows with professional artists.

•        Specialized Groups: Groups focusing on youth, specific genres, or community dialogue, such as the Jersey City Theater Center (Jersey City, New Jersey) or West Hudson Arts + Theater Company (WHATCo) (Kearny, New Jersey). 

Why It Matters

 

·        Cultural Hubs: Often the only performing arts source in an area, bringing entertainment and participation.

·        Skill Building: Offers a stress-free environment to learn acting, singing, and technical skills.

·        Community Building: Connects people through shared creative projects and provides a space for community reflection and expression. 

There’s merit to this description, but it actually describes what’s usually referred to as “community theater.” In my usage the term “community-based theater” has a wider application than the AI description indicates. It does mean “local, non-professional groups using volunteers for actors and crew,” commonly known as “community theater.”

 

However, for me the term Community Based Theater (hereafter CBT), in a wider way, describes any theater in this country, including professional repertory companies, that is not run primarily for commercial purposes (as are Broadway shows and related touring companies).

 

Where art is concerned, rigid distinctions seldom work well, boundaries are porous, and definitions often have to leave room for exceptions. For example, traditionally “community theater” (also historically referred to as “little theater”) has meant performances of Broadway plays and musicals by local, amateur theater companies. As I indicated, this seems to be primarily what AI is talking about.

 

My use of “CBT” includes those theaters, but smaller ones too, for example, performances of plays that friends of mine and I have staged in living rooms, with audiences of maybe a dozen people at a time, and larger theaters too, like regional theaters (see below). And it includes larger theaters too, such as “regional theaters,” discussed more below.

Why does the use of the term “community-based theater” (CBT) matter? For me this line of thought began as a way to explain and even justify the kind of theater I do. I have made a little money as a playwright, but certainly not a living, and some of my plays have had multiple productions, but, again, not tremendously.

An aspect of CBT that is not included in the AI description is that in many cases the artistic standards and intentions behind CBT can be as high as those of commercial theater – or higher – although abilities and resources may lag behind Broadway standards. What the AI description of CBT leaves out is the determination of many in the field to live up to the highest artistic standards they possibly can.

A professional in any field has advantages that an amateur does not have – greater experience, working with others of high skill levels, training with leaders of the craft, not to mention benefits such as payment, a contract, unions, a budget, and so on.

However, non-professionals can reach as high as their abilities will take them (and they can take theater classes too), and my own experience is that many in CBT assume not only that they should achieve the highest levels of artistic achievement, but that they can.

Sometimes, indeed, they do, and CBT has often been the starting point for professional careers. After all everyone has to start somewhere – few if any find themselves instantly at the top of their profession.

My wife, Pat, was an excellent director, probably the best I’ve worked with, partly because she assumed that “Broadway standards” were what the cast was reaching for. She knew that by no means everyone had the ability to reach those standards; but she made that a goal, and many were surprised at what they could actually accomplish.

By the way, the distinction “professional/amateur” may not be acknowledged in the same way by people in theater and those outside it. Those not associated with CBT may assume “professional” means “getting paid for it,” and “amateur” means “not paid or little paid.”

For many CBT participants I know, however, however, “amateur” means something more like “not dependable for working hard at the craft” and “professional” more like “dependable at all times and in all circumstances,” a definition that obviously is achievable whether one is paid or not.

There is a similar ambiguity between “commercial” and “non-commercial” theater. In some European countries, in particular, theater is subsidized by the government at some level. In the United States, although varied kinds of government assistance are possible (for example, for state university theater programs), most theaters are basically responsible for coming up with the money they need to operate—especially now, with the National Endowment for the Arts curtailed.

This is as true of CBT as it is of Broadway and regional theater. (The Metropolitan Opera in New York City recently announced major cutbacks in staff and programming because of funding difficulties. Opera is a form of theater that’s particularly difficult to sustain.)

Except in unusual circumstances (including state government subsidy of university theaters), every theater has to run on the profit side of the balance sheet or it will have to close. Even if no actors are paid, others on the staff – directors, musicians, technicians – may have to be paid, depending on who’s available.

Performance space must be rented or, if owned by the theater, property taxes must be paid. Plays, both published and new, if not in the public domain, almost always require royalty payment. A building must be heated or cooled. Insurance may be required. Material for sets and set construction, lighting and sound setups, and costumes ordinarily take money.

So ordinarily a CBT is likely to be commercial on the business side, even if it doesn’t pay its actors. Some, of course, do, which brings up the question of “regional theaters” – major, professional, top-quality theaters like those I mentioned in the AI list at the beginning of this article.

Of course, again, strict distinctions aren’t necessary, and may not be possible, but from what I know of the beginnings of “regional theaters,” major operations like Actors Theater of Louisville (Kentucky), the McCarter Theatre Center (Princeton, New Jersey), Arena Stage (Washington, DC), and the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis, Minnesota), began with literally a “community” impulse – the desire to bring the highest quality theater to their own towns.

All those theaters are professional – their staffs and actors are paid. Some put on plays that go on to be performed on Broadway. But all originated in impulses that were not exclusively commercial.

For example, I was present (as a high school student) at a meeting in the 1960’s when Richard Block (to this day an active director and speaker) and Ewel Cornett (1937-2002) combined forces to create the Actors Theater of Louisville. I remember their enthusiasm and their determination to bring quality theater to their city (and they did).

The same can be said for many “regional theaters,” major operations such as the McCarter Theatre Center, Arena Stage, and the Guthrie Theater. All those theaters are unquestionably professional – their staffs and actors are paid. Some put on plays that go on to be performed on Broadway.

But all the theaters originated in impulses that were not merely commercial. So to call them CBT is not out of the question, despite their scope and the size of their budgets.

In talking about “community-based theater,” it’s worth asking what community we’re talking about. “Community” is often a loaded word. Which community – what segment of the population – does a CBT represent? As the drama critic Eric Bentley (1916-2000) wrote in his seminal book In Search of Theatre (1953):

“The general public” is as much of an abstraction as “the common man.” Today there are dozens of publics separated by differences of interest as well as by levels of taste, intelligence, and education.

But I think there are two communities in particular that can be seen as sources of inspiration for CBT, and the two are not mutually exclusive. One is a community of those interested in civic development, who believe that a theater will enhance the city’s or the area’s life. The other is a community of artists who want a theater as a place to work and to do worthwhile productions.

An example of both communities working together is the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where the desire to enhance the reputation and culture of the city met the interest of the director Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971), who with co-workers was looking for a place to do significant theater.

I suspect that more than one CBT has failed because the community of actors, excited about the possibility of doing theater, didn’t sufficiently consider the community in which they would be based.

A plus for CBT is that it doesn’t have to cost an enormous amount of money. (There are exceptions here too – as noted above, opera, even for CBT companies, is nearly always extremely expensive to perform.)

It can cost as much as nine million dollars to put a play on Broadway, and up to twenty million dollars or more to put on a Broadway musical. Those figures are likely to be outdated in a few years, and not by getting smaller.

At the other extreme, I have staged a play with four actors for literally no money at all. It was satisfying to see the play, which I wrote, produced and well-acted, but obviously its impact was modest. On the other hand, many Broadway productions cost vastly more money and vanish with little evidence that they were ever there.

This observation leads to the question of what CBT can achieve beyond the simple purpose of getting a play staged. I remember my friend and theater expert David Semonin asking that question – in effect, if a theater isn’t top rate, why bother? David’s question is provocative. Here are some of my answers.

CBT is important to commercial theater because it can help create an appetite for Broadway and similar plays and musicals, familiarizing audiences with the material if not necessarily with the same staging. It can be a “feeder stream.”

A successful commercial play – a big Broadway play or musical – will have its own value, and a traditional function of CBT has been to make such shows available to local audiences, often years after their initial success, and to provide an opportunity for people to appreciate the worth of such shows.

Art – definitely including theater – is always a process of borrowing, lending, or trading elements from one iteration to another. The painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is said to have recommended that artists “steal from the best,” and the cross-fertilization of commercial theater and CBT repeatedly demonstrates how that principle works.

CBT also allows people to perform on stage (or direct, design, costume, and so on) who are not able to do so in a commercial setting – a group that includes the majority of people who have experience in theater.

A friend of mine with years of Broadway experience once remarked to me, “The higher you go in this profession, the less the satisfaction.” I suspect this is true. A failure on Broadway, for example, can cost investors a fortune and artists a great deal of prestige. The stakes for CBT, although important, are significantly less threatening.

Another benefit of CBT is that it can help train actors and sometimes help prepare them for work of greater scope. A few years ago, a CBT theater in my area, the Theater League of Clifton, staged the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (which first opened on Broadway in 2002, based on the 1967 movie) with a woman in the title role who was then around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Her name was Rachel Zegler (b. 2001). Subsequently she was selected by the film director Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) to play the role of Maria in his film version of the musical West Side Story (2021; 2022 Golden Globe Award) and has since had a stellar career in films, on Broadway, and on the West End in London.

[After WSS, Zegler appeared as Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023; 2024 People's Choice Award), and then as the title character in Disney's Snow White (2025),  She made her Broadway debut as Juliet in Romeo + Juliet (2024) and her debut in London’s West End in the title role of the musical Evita (2025; 2025 Stage Debut Award).]

My experience is that fine performances are possible in CBT. This is not to say that if the same performances were transferred to Broadway they would always have the same effect, and productions by necessity adapt themselves to their circumstances.

Still, excellent work is possible. The playwright and reviewer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), looking not at theater but at the equivalent of CBT in music, wrote:

I do not mean that if the singers had been transferred from the little schoolroom and the mild cottage-piano to the stage of Covent Garden or the platform of St James’s Hall, with a full orchestra thundering around them, they could have produced the same effect. Suffice it that they did produce it in Penult [a small English town], and gave me thereby greater pleasure than I often get from singers with far greater pretensions. (Shaw on Music, 1955, Doubleday Anchor)

Certainly it’s possible for a person to appear in play after play and not learn anything. Today, however, training in theater is widespread, as is talent, and there are likely to be people in a production that one can learn from, sometimes through observation, sometimes through explicit advice.

There are many other things to learn from participating in CBT. Years ago my wife, Pat. and I took our high school-age children on college visits. The thought occurred to us that a substantial number of people graduate from theater programs each year, and parents may wonder – we wondered – how do they all find work in theater?

They don’t, of course, at least not necessarily in commercial theater. But more than one dean of a theater department explained to us that the skills one learns in theater are “portable.” One learns things like being on time, focusing on tasks, listening, taking notes, getting along with people, analyzing and evaluating, and of course reading and presentation. (See the ROT post “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines” [21 July 2011], which presents an argument for teaching theater, and the arts in general, in schools.)

One also learns important things about life – that successes are to be enjoyed and treasured, that not everything succeeds, that it’s important to do one’s best even when the moment looks bleak, that there’s value in victories of many sizes.

Theater at all levels is a matter of doing one’s best, and, if that doesn’t work, trying something else. In that, as in so much else, it resembles the life it imitates.

Theater, by its nature as a community activity, also helps draw together the people who work in it. I am friends to this day with people I worked with in CBT decades ago.

CBT also provides a tryout arena for new and unproduced plays. At a minimum, an author may have the experience of seeing the play performed for an audience, and the play may possibly achieve other productions (this has happened, I am happy to report, to me).

It might also be published. Publishing companies that specialize in playscripts want to see evidence that the play has been performed before they will consider adding it to their catalog, and a CBT production can fulfil that requirement. And, of course, it might ultimately have a future in commercial theater, although such cases are rare. (See “Be More Chill: The Journey” [28 April and 1 May 2019], a collection of articles about a play that started at a community-based theater, made the unlikely transfer to Off-Broadway and then Broadway in 2015-2018.)

Traditionally over the years many community theaters, in particular, have been conservative in their programming, offering primarily comedies and musicals originally produced on Broadway. However, CBT also offers the opportunity to see plays that might otherwise not be staged, or that might not have been well received in their initial productions in more commercial theater.

My observation, for what it’s worth, is that as the number of interesting plays grows (and it is growing), the more willing even community theaters may be to try plays that are unusual or possibly disturbing.

A number of CBT’s now host new play contests or invite submissions. This, as I can testify, is an enormous encouragement to playwrights.

It’s fair to ask what the future holds for CBT. I don’t think there’s any question that its manifestations will change. Art, including theater, is continually morphing. For example, current audiences seem to prefer shorter and shorter plays – a new three act play is almost an impossibility, and one long act often takes the place of two shorter ones.

At the commercial level, theater has no choice but to program shorter plays, to consider new kinds of audiences, and to utilize and emphasize technology in productions. All these trends can be seen on Broadway now. Some will have more effect on CBT than others.

What will be the impact of the wave of technology – most spectacularly and dangerously AI – on CBT in the next generations? When I reached middle and high school, the two largest avenues for student growth were sports and the arts – primarily theater.

Today’s students are familiar with many more kinds of sports, and as for performances, they are more likely to be making YouTube videos than hunting out the local community theater. At least it seems that way to me. AI is a wild card so far, but it’s bound to have an impact.

The fact that schools still do “school plays” encourages me, because if theater grabs you it doesn’t let go (the phenomenon known as being “stage struck”). I also have hope for inventiveness, for exasperation with technology, and for a continuing human need for accessible forms of self-expression.

As I was completing this article I read a statement from Brooke Hartman Ditchfield, the new Artistic Director of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, which has combined with another theater under the name of Circuit Arts. Her message, which illustrates much of what I’ve written here about CBT, reads in part:

We are exploring a variety of plays to stage at the Playhouse, with a particular focus on new works, supporting playwrights, and championing emerging voices. . . . I believe, especially at this moment in time, that theater is a vital part of the democratic idea, and that a thriving theater community reflects a thriving community as a whole. My aim is to carry that vision forward in the plays we produce, the artists we champion, and the audiences we draw to the Playhouse. New work from bold voices, co-productions with collaborators near and far, theater that sparks conversation, ignites curiosity, inspires reflection, and welcomes all; these are the ideas that I, and all of us at Circuit Arts, are so excited to bring our energy to.

So “Support Your Local Community-Based Theater.” There’s a worthwhile slogan!

[As usual, Kirk’s remarks suggest a number of further comments, some from personal experiences that illustrate his statements.  For example, In Kirk’s discussion of the "two communities" for CBT’s in the U.S., I see as an example of the first, “those . . . who believe that a theater will enhance the city’s or the area’s life,” as Washington, D.C., and of the second, those who “want a theater as a place to work and to do worthwhile productions,” as Los Angeles.

[As I report in "'Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)" (25 December 2011), Arena Stage was definitely started to bring theater to the Washington, as D.C. didn't have much indigenous theater before 1950.  Before Zelda Fichandler (1924-2016), with her husband, Thomas C. Fichandler (1915-97), and Edward Mangum (1913-2001), founded Arena, theater in Washington meant a touring show at the National Theatre, the Capital’s Broadway-level house, or a college production at Catholic University, whose pioneering university-based theater program was started in 1937 by Father Gilbert V. Hartke (1907-86).

[In the program note for Arena’s opening production, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, on 16 August 1950, Fichandler wrote:

Local in origin, [Arena Stage] was founded in the belief that if drama-hungry playgoers outside of the ten blocks of Broadway are to have a living stage, they must create it for themselves.  Arena Stage was financed by Washingtonians—students, teachers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, government workers, housewives—who love theatre and who want to see it flourish in the city in which they work and live.  Its permanent staff of distinguished actors and technicians, many of whom have come to Arena Stage via the stages of other cities, now all call Washington their home.  (Quoted by Fichandler in her essay “Institution-as-Artwork,” American Theatre 30 January 1986 [online only], <https://www.americantheatre.org/1986/01/30/institution-as-artwork/>, 2 March 2026; reprinted in The Long Revolution [Theatre Communications Group, 2024]; originally published in Theatre Profiles 7 [TCG, 1986])

[In Los Angeles, I discovered that there are scores of Off-Off-Broadway-type troupes founded by and for all those chronically under-employed film artists who are starved not just for work, but for theater, where many of them got their starts. The phenomenon, which allowed screen artists to showcase their talents for film and TV scouts, developed in 1972 and proliferated through 1985.

[Kirk’s comment, quoting something attributed to Picasso, advising theater artists to “steal from the best,” reminded me of a remark that I recall my college theater director, Lee Kahn, used to say.  (Kirk and I were college classmates, and I checked my memory with him and Kirk confirmed that Lee did often say, “The first rule of theater is theft.”  Kirk even added that “that can be applied to all the other arts I know of, too”—which sounds about right to me.]

[As for theaters that failed because the leadership "didn’t sufficiently consider the community in which they would be based," I give you Peter Sellars (b. 1957) and the ANT in the 1980s (as I described it in "‘Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)."  (ANT—Sellars's proposed American National Theater at the Kenedy Center when he was newly appointed artistic director there (1984-86)—may not have actually qualified as a "community-based theater," but it was the "community"—i.e., Washingtonians and D,C.'s theater press—that scuttled his directorship and the prospects for ANT. 

[Sellars actually said, “I think it’s my job, to do things that are obscure,” and the Kennedy Center lost audience from the start of Sellars’s tenure.  When Ajax, his last production, closed a week early due to poor box office, he more or less said that he didn’t care if people complained about his productions as long as they were talking about them.  He essentially insulted and dismissed his audience.  He left Washington with a tear left on his contract, and ANT basically just died.

[In re: the discussion of "amateur" vs. "professional," I found this on ROT in "Greatness Thrust Upon Them” (27 May 2023)—which I assume is Kirk’s recollection of the conversation he had with his friend David Semonin:

My friend David Semonin (1941-2010), about whom I’ve written in this blog (see “Saints of the Theater” on Rick On Theater, 30 December 2011), had a way of asking questions that stick in the mind.  One day, probably after he had seen one too many local theater productions, he asked, “What’s the justification for community theater?” 

At the time and place he asked that question (decades ago in Louisville, Kentucky), admittedly there wasn’t a lot of outstanding non-professional theater (or professional for that matter – Actors Theater of Louisville was barely on the horizon at that time).  Theater has its skilled professionals. What do amateurs bring to the table?

. . . .

The word “amateur” unquestionably provides the basis for one answer to David.  It doesn’t mean second-rate (or worse), it doesn’t mean less good than something else, it doesn’t mean naïve or shoddy.  It comes from the Latin word “amator” or “lover,” from the verb “amare” meaning “to love” – a strong, passionate word.

An amateur, then, is a person who’s fallen in love with an activity, and that’s what so often happens in theater – one is “stage struck,” overwhelmed by a powerful attraction.  This was certainly the case for me.  I was fifteen when my friend Perry Baer invited me to a Saturday morning work call at Louisville Children’s Theatre (now Stage One, a very fine professional operation).

[I added, in the afterword to this post:

Many ROTters may know this, but the British don’t use ‘amateur’ with the same negative connotation that we do in the U.S.  A case in point: when I was stationed in Berlin with the army and helped start a theater group at the air base, we sort of modeled it after a similar group the British forces had.  Their troupe was called BATS, which was an acronym for the British Amateur Theatre Society. 

One of our founding members was the British wife of a U.S. Air Force NCO, and she wanted to name our group TAT to emulate the British group—but we went with the Tempelhof American Theatre because of the derogatory sense of ‘amateur’ in American usage. 

[I made this point several times on Roger.

[“Be More Chill: The Journey” (28 April and 1 May 2019), which I cross-reference when Kirk addresses the occurrence of a play originated in a CBT is transferred to a commercial theater, is a collection of articles about a play that started at the Two River Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey—a community-based theater—on 30 May 2015 and opened Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center ln Theatre Row on 9 August 2018 and then went to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre on 10 March 2019 for.30 previews and 177 regular performances. 

[The musical It was nominated for the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, and on 20 October 2018, it was announced that Shawn Levy and Greg Berlanti will produce a film adaptation of both the novel and the musical of Be More Chill.  No release date has been announced, though reports are that a script has been written, but shooting hasn’t started.

[Kirk has informed me that the quotation from Brooke Hartman Ditchfield of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse was from an e-mail to supporters from last February.  Ditchfield is the new artistic director; her predecessor, MJ Bruder Munafo, had served for 30 years and retired at the end of 2025. Ditchfield was previously director of Circuit Stage, part of Circuit Arts, a Martha’s Vineyard community arts organization that has recently merged with MVP.

[MVP is an archetypical CBT.  At the merger announcement, the Playhouse board of directors chair said that both arts organizations “are dedicated to creating accessible, meaningful, and diverse cultural experiences—year-round and Island-wide.”  He added, “Together, we can . . . ensure that live theater, film, music, comedy, and community events continue to enrich the Vineyard.”  These are fundamental goals of community-based organizations.

[For readers who don’t know, Martha’s Vineyard, which is Dukes County, is one of the two principal islands off the south shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; the other is Nantucket, which is Nantucket County.  Both islands have many small islands associated with them; on the Vineyard’s smaller islands is Chappaquiddick. off the eastern end. 

[The year-round population of Martha’s Vineyard is small, a little over 20,000, but during the summer, the population swells to over 200,000.  Most of these summer residents are affluent, and many are artists in various fields.  Generally speaking, they’re a sophisticated lot, which is why the arts, including theater, are important to the islanders, both vacationers and year-rounders.  This is one reason that organizations like the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse and Circuit Arts are important and supported, and why groups like these feel so connected to their communities.  It’s almost a perfect symbiosis.]