About Lamp-Lite
LAMP-LITE THEATRE opens its 35th Season in the East Texas area with seven top rate shows, chosen to showcase some of our remarkable Lamp-Lite talent.
This season we respond to repeated pleas to “bring back On Golden Pond.” We have scheduled a spring showing with Bill Parsons and Jackie Vose as the old couple and Amy Maurer as their daughter. Another often requested show, The Philadelphia Story, is slated for late February. Debbie Berry takes a turn as a comedienne in the Katherine Hepburn role to lead an all-star cast in the classic comedy.
Also, this fall we finally bring back Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with SFA music student Steve McDonald in the title role. Steve is already singing professionally with the Shreveport Opera! The season also offers a second chance to see Pump Boys and Dinettes, a delicious little down-home musical with the original cast from the first production.
Tom Jones closes the season with Kent Johnson as Tom, the fun-loving foundling whose good heart and winning ways with the lassies lead him into a series of hilarious adventures. Over twenty Lamp-Lite comedians join in the merry-making.
IN 1971 Lamp-Lite Theatre began life in the rented parish hall of Christ Episcopal Church. Drawing from the dense pool of local talent, Sarah McMullan put together a troupe of actors who brought first-rate productions to the tiny stage at Christ Church.
In 1976 the Lamp-Liters joined with other artists in the area to form the City Spirit Arts Center out of the old Phelan Warehouse. Mother Nature brought torrential rains and floods during the seventies which resulted in the warehouse theatre being declared a flood plain. For the next year, the Lamp-Liters went on the road with dinner theatre productions at the University and at local restaurants. Meanwhile, the City of Nacogdoches offered a land lease for the new theatre home, our present location on Loop 224 and Old Tyler Road.
Actors and friends took down the old warehouse theatre,
board by board and brick by brick, to reassemble, add to, and
finally raise the Lamp-Lite Theatre.
The lights went
on May 19, 1979, with The Last of the Red Hot Lovers opening
the new theatre. Built
almost entirely by volunteer labor and a few generous professionals,
the theatre has steadily grown.
New wings were added:
dressing rooms, storage space, etc.
Grants from the Meadows Foundation, Temple-Inland, Southland
Pineywoods, and the Junior Forum came just in time for sorely needed
space. Another grant
from Southland Pineywoods and matched locally, upgraded our sound
equipment.
The
present intimate auditorium comfortably seats 216.
Each row is elevated above the one in front so that there
truly is no bad seat in the house.
Area artists exhibit in the lobby for each show, while other
scenic artists create an ever changing panorama as settings for the
plays. In 1995 Lamp-Lite
started a tradition of producing a big summer family musical with a
wildly successful production of Oliver!.
An equally popular presentation of Annie followed
the next year, only to be topped by The Wizard of Oz in 1997.
Both Annie, Oz and Oliver!, and The Sound of
Music were brought back as perennial favorites, and Lamp-Lite
introduced Bye Bye Birdie, Anne of Green Gables, Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs, Seussical the Musical and Annie Warbucks
to East Texas audiences.
Volunteers join the ever-broadening number of participants of the
community theatre, acting on-stage, running lights, building and
painting sets, making music, dancing, parking cars, working the box
office, ushering, putting together publications, mail-outs, grant
applications, benefits . . .”It’s all part of the show at
Lamp-Lite,” said Lamp-Lite Director, Sarah McMullan.
Each season spotlights off-Broadway and on-Broadway musicals,
comedies, dramas and occasionally a premiere presentation of an
original work by a regional playwright.
Children’s classes and plays, Christmas plays, and mystery
dinner theatres are icing on the cake.
How to Get to the Theater