The Salem Theatre Company – a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization – enriches the artistic, cultural, and economic life of the Greater Salem region through the performance of classic, contemporary, and new works of exceptional theater. We strive to move and inspire, and to build connections with new, diverse audiences and theatre artists through the performing arts and arts education outreach.
2009-2010 marks the company’s Seventh Season of award-winning, year-round, professional theater in historic downtown Salem. The company is led by Executive Director Gary LaParl and Artistic Director John Fogle. The Seventh Season features all of the company’s popular annual Second Stage offerings, as well as plays from a diverse array of playwrights that will both challenge and delight audiences. The Seventh Season includes productions Joe Orton’s Loot, Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order, and – as the STC’s first musical ever – James Rado and Gerome Ragni’s Hair.
In the STC’s first six seasons, the company staged 22 Main Stage productions and over 40 Second Stage programs. The STC has produced A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (twice!), David Sedaris’s The Santaland Diaries, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Macbeth, Anne Nelson’s The Guys, Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, the American premiere of Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), David Ives’ All in the Timing, David Auburn’s Proof, A.P. Herbert’s Two Gentlemen of Soho, Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days, Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney, Selagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, and Ted Hughes’ Seneca’s Oedipus, Robert Reich’s Public Exposure, Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, Harold Pinter’s An Evening of Pinter, and Steve Martin’s The Underpants.
On the Second Stage, the STC has offered regular annual programs including educational workshops, improv comedy shows, Chilling Tales onboard Friendship, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Shakespeare Open Mic Night, Moments of Play: North Shore Festival of Original Theater, Improv on the Bricks, and multiple installments in the on-going Staged Reading Series.
Nearly 30,000 people have attended an STC event in its first seven years of operations, and the STC has generated one million dollars in direct and indirect spending for the local Salem economy through its productions.
In 2003 the STC received Community Newspaper Company’s Readers’ Choice Gold Medal Award for Best Place to See Theatre north of Boston and the Bronze Medal Award for Best Place for Family Entertainment. In 2004 the STC was awarded the City of Salem’s Salute to Salem Award for its commitment to the community and its spirit of service and volunteerism. In 2005 and 2009, the STC was nominated for the Salem Chamber of Commerce’s Good Neighbor Award in recognition of its exemplary role as a community-building nonprofit organization. In 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 the organization received the Readers’ Choice Silver Medal for Best Place to See Theatre north of Boston. STC productions and events have been named a “Best Bet” by the Boston Globe twelve times since 2003.
