Phoenix Theatre breathes life into stories to serve and benefit a growing, diverse and increasingly urban community. Through a range of professional theatrical experiences, we articulate in vibrant fashion well crafted stories demonstrating the power of the arts to ignite both artist and audience and instill in students both knowledge and skill.
Phoenix Theatre, great plays told in great ways
• Cementing our reputation as a theatre devoted to maintaining, nurturing and redefining American Classic Theatre for a new audience.
• Nurturing the further development of Phoenix Theatre’s New Works festival, creating a venue to develop and premiere new works for national release
• Developing a full scale adult and children's educational academy, offering classroom instruction, master classes, internships, technical training and mentorship
• Fortifying Cookie Company’s visibility as quality family theatre
For 85 Years the Story of Phoenix Theatre has been one of Laughter, Tears, Music, and Life!
Phoenix Theatre is a place to: Excite, Explore, Engage, and Educate.
Generations of Arizonans have come to know the magic of the stage through the work of the organization that is now known as Phoenix Theatre. It is Arizona ’s oldest arts organization, and one of the longest-running theatres in the country.
Created in 1920 as the Phoenix Players, the young troupe found a home in the “carriage house” – i.e., stables – of the Heard family, at what is now 100 E. McDowell St., in 1923. Throughout the ‘20s and ‘30s, the Phoenix Little Theatre offered its sleepy home town productions of classic works, hits from Broadway and contemporary theatre of the era. During WWII, the theatre kept its stage lit, entertaining the troops from the airbases that soon dotted the region.
When the Heard family offered a portion of their land to the rapidly-growing city of Phoenix for a Civic Center , they included the condition that the Phoenix (Little) Theatre would continue as a resident company on the site. The current MainStage was opened in 1950, and has seen the theatre through a transition from an accomplished amateur theatre to a fully professional theatre company.
Today’s Phoenix Theatre is a not-for-profit corporation that offers a full range of theatrical programming: its acclaimed MainStage subscription series of musicals, comedies and dramas; the 25-year-old Cookie Company Theatre for Young Audiences; the annual New Works Festival; and excellent curricular and extra-curricular educational programs. It is a member of Theatre Communications Group, the national organization of American theatres, employs members of the Actor’s Equity Association (AEA), Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC), United Scenic Artists (USA) and is supported in part by the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and hundreds of individual, corporate, and foundation donors.
