#Pasadena little theatre professional

Others had operating budgets of $50,000 or more, with paid memberships nearing 2,000. Some had full-time salaried directors a few also had paid staffs.

#Pasadena little theatre professional

Much of the impetus for this growth came with the industrial expansion of Texas, which brought into the state many residents who had known the theater elsewhere and wanted it in their new communities also the spectacular growth of educational theater sharply honed the urge for theater activity among its trained graduates and excited the interest of those from other disciplines.Д«y the late 1960s some of the larger community theaters were professional in all but name, with volunteer actors and technicians trained in the universities and on the professional stage. In many cities of 25,000 or less it was the major cultural activity. Every major city had at least one local theater some, such as Houston and Dallas, had more than one within the city limits and one in almost every suburb. With the end of the war and with renewed interest in theater to supplement and substitute for the decrease in the touring professional theater, the community theater flourished in Texas on a broadened scale from Amarillo and Midland to Beaumont and Port Arthur. Personnel difficulties during World War II brought all Texas little theater activity to a virtual standstill, the chief remaining function being to entertain at military encampments. During the Great Depression many of the little theaters disbanded, though the organizations in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Tyler, and other larger Texas cities continued to flourish.

Winners were Sherman, 1926 Denison, 1927 Nacogdoches, 1928 Dallas, 1929 and Waco, 1930. From 1926 through 1930 an annual competition was held among the Texas little theaters. By 1927 it had built its own theater at a cost of $120,000. In international competition in New York it won the Belasco Cup for three successive years (in 1924, 1925, and 1926). The most successful of these was the one in Dallas. Gradually the movement spread, until by 1930 there were sixty-eight little theaters in Texas. It was followed by the Dallas Little Theatre in early 1920. The first actual little theater, known as the Green Mask Players, was founded in Houston in November 1919. ( Little theater is a small theater designed for low-cost theatrical productions produced for a small or limited audience.) Before the beginning of the little theater movement in Texas in 1919, sporadic, unrelated attempts had been made to form theatrical groups, notably the Curtain Club of the University of Texas under Stark Young in 1909 and the Red Lantern Players of Houston. The little theater movement in Texas was an outgrowth of an interest in dramatics that stemmed from the days of the Republic of Texas and that at times found expression in dramatic clubs in more than 100 Texas towns.