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Chester Theatre Company (CTC) is a professional summer theatre company in Chester, Massachusetts. CTC performances take place in the Chester Town Hall, which seat approximately 130 guests. CTC also operates several community-based educational programs in Western Massachusetts.
CTC has earned a reputation for producing "some of the most adventurous programming in the area," according to a 2018 article in The New Yorker . [1]
CTC was founded in 1990 by Vincent Dowling [2] and H. Newman Marsh as the "Miniature Theatre of Chester."
From 1997 to 2015, Byam Stevens served as artistic director of CTC. Stevens led CTC through a lack of outside funding due to the Great Recession. He helped CTC transition from the Chester Miniature Theatre Company to a company focused on contemporary theater. "(Theatre) should address the lasting questions of life, and it should serve as a forum for us to address the important issues that are facing us as a society in the present." [3]
In 2015, Daniel Elihu Kramee became the artistic director of CTC . Kramer has been focusing on language-driven pieces with small casts, Under Kramer, CTC has been working to expand the internship program.
In 2019, Tara Franklin became the Director of Education. CTC has created and run a number of education and outreach programs.
CTC is known for a range of post-show discussions [4] following the majority of its performances. These conversations are an essential part of CTC's education programs.
CTC brings audience members on theatre tours to London, [5] and to North American locations, including Chicago, Washington, DC, and Toronto and Stratford, Ontario,. [6]
Starting in 2005, CTC paired with Gateway Regional Middle School in Huntington, Massachusetts, to help young people write a produce their own work.
CTC produces a series of ten-minute plays written by the students, complete with professional designers, directors, and actors. They also helped teach the students during an 8-week after-school writing course and weekend retreat. [7]
The Camp Shepard Project was a similar collaboration between CTC, Westfield State College, and the Westfield YMCA. Westfield State College provided actors and designers, while directors from CTC acted as mentors to the young writers. The program was designed for students in 6-8th grade. The course took place at the Westfield YMCA. [8]
Chester is a town in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, situated in Western Massachusetts. It is part of the Springfield metropolitan statistical area. The town includes the Chester Factory Village Historic District. The total population was 1,228 in the 2020 census.
The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is a professional not-for-profit theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1979 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts reinterpreted in refreshing new ways. Over the past forty years it has garnered many of the nation's most distinguished awards, including a Pulitzer Prize (1982), a Tony Award (1986), and a Jujamcyn Award (1985). In 2002, the A.R.T. was the recipient of the National Theatre Conference's Outstanding Achievement Award, and it was named one of the top three theaters in the country by Time magazine in 2003. The A.R.T. is housed in the Loeb Drama Center at Harvard University, a building it shares with the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club. The A.R.T. operates the Institute for Advanced Theater Training.
The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions among Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler. Disenchanted with Broadway, they intended to form a theater with a resident acting company, to perform classic plays in rotating repertory, while maintaining the highest professional standards.
Vincent Gerard Dowling was an Irish actor and director.
Bairbre Dowling was an Irish actress. She appeared in films, frequently on the American stage and on US TV as well as in Irish productions.
The National Theatre School of Canada is a private institution of professional theatre studies in Montreal, Quebec. Established in 1960, the NTS receives its principal funding from grants awarded by the Government of Canada and from cultural ministries in each of the provinces, with added financial support from private and corporate donors. it has offered incomparable training to actors, directors, playwrights, set and costume designers and production specialists to work in professional theatre.
The Boston Ballet is an American professional classical ballet company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1963 by E. Virginia Williams and Sydney Leonard, and was the first professional repertory ballet company in New England. It has been led by Violette Verdy (1980–1984), Bruce Marks (1985–1997), and Anna-Marie Holmes (1997–2000). Mikko Nissinen was appointed artistic director in September 2001.
Trinity Repertory Company is a non-profit regional theater located at 201 Washington Street in Providence, Rhode Island. The theater is a member of the League of Resident Theatres. Founded in 1963, the theater is "one of the most respected regional theatres in the country". Featuring the last longstanding Resident Acting Company in the U.S., Trinity Rep presents a balance of world premiere, contemporary, and classic works, including an annual production of A Christmas Carol, for an estimated annual audience of 110,000. In its 52-year history, the theater has produced nearly 67 world premieres, mounted national and international tours and, through its MFA program, trained hundreds of new actors and directors. Project Discovery, Trinity Rep's pioneering educational outreach program launched in 1966, annually introduces over 15,000 Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut high school students to live theater through matinees as well as in-school residencies and workshops. As of 2016, Trinity Rep's educational programs serve students in around 60% of Rhode Island schools, and it has a 9 million USD annual budget.
The Actors' Gang is an experimental theatre and nonprofit group based at the Ivy Substation in Culver City, California. It was founded in 1981 by a group of actors, including Tim Robbins, now a member of the board and artistic director of the troupe.
The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (PBT) is an American professional ballet company based in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1969.
Seattle Rep is a major regional theater located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Dámaso Rodríguez and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann. It received the 1990 Regional Theatre Tony Award.
The Children's Theatre Company (CTC) is a regional theater established in 1965 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, specializing in plays for families, young audiences and the very young. The theater is the largest theater for multigenerational audiences in the United States and is the recipient of 2003 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. The November 2, 2004, edition of Time magazine named the company as the top theater for children in the U.S.
Shakespeare & Company is an American theatre company and venue complex located in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. It was founded in 1978 by artistic director Tina Packer. The company performs plays by Shakespeare and new plays of "social and political significance", reaching over 75,000 patrons annually. It also conducts training programs for professional classical actors as well as education programs for elementary through high school students, the latter reaching over 50,000 students annually.
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival is a Shakespeare festival in Nashville, Tennessee.
City Theatre is a professional theater company located in Pittsburgh's South Side. It specializes in productions of new plays and has commissioned new works by playwrights on the national theatre scene, including Christopher Durang, Adam Rapp, and Jeffrey Hatcher. Established in 1975 as the City Players under the direction of Marjorie Walker, it was originally composed mainly of Carnegie Mellon graduates and was part of Pittsburgh's Department of Parks and Recreation, performing at schools, parks, and housing projects. Initially the group shared their performance space in the North Side's Allegheny Center with Pittsburgh Public Theater. In 1979, the group was offered a residency at the University of Pittsburgh and renamed itself City Theatre. “Homeless” for a brief period of time, the University of Pittsburgh theatre department offered to shelter the theater company in 1980. Attilo Favorini, head of the department, thought that, “The City Theater offered us [Pitt] the opportunity for Pitt’s students to work a professional company.”(Steele, Bruce “Artistic Struggles -The City Theater Company: A History of Bad Luck and Good Theater” pg. 27) In addition to receiving a new troupe of professional actors, arts funding through CETA enabled the expansion of the company and the creation of the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1980. In 1981, under the artistic direction of Marc Masterson, the company moved to a new performance space on Bouquet Street in Oakland. The company again moved to a new performance space at the former Bingham United Methodist Church in the South Side in 1991, where in addition to its own season it acted as a host space for the earliest productions of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. Marc Masterson became artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, and Tracy Brigden became artistic director in 2001.
Daniel Kramer is an American-born theatre, opera and dance director. He was appointed artistic director of the English National Opera in April 2016.
Motley Theatre Design Course is a one-year independent theatre design course in London. It was founded at Sadler's Wells Opera in 1966.
Westfield Technical Academy (formerly known as Westfield Vocational Technical High School) is a technical, coeducational, four-year public high school, part of the Westfield Public Schools district in Westfield, Massachusetts, United States. The school opened as the Westfield Independent Industrial School on October 1, 1911.
The Hangar Theatre is a non-profit, regional theatre located at 801 Taughannock Boulevard in Ithaca, NY. Its mainstage season and children's shows occur during the summer, but the Hangar, and other organizations, utilize the space year-round for special events. The tenets of the Hangar's mission statement are to enrich, enlighten, educate and entertain.
Marti Stevens was an American educator and theater director. Born in Chicago, she spent 10 years as a professional director and actress on off-Broadway stages in New York City before relocating to the rural community of Cornville, Maine. She was posthumously inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.