Center Stage is a three-venue live entertainment complex in the Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The building opened on October 26, 1966, as Theatre Atlanta, a non-profit repertory theater built as a memorial to Helen Lee Cartledge, who died in the 1962 Orly air disaster.
- Venue
- Center Stage
- Address
- 1374 W Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30309-2965
- Town
- Atlanta, US
Center Stage is a three-venue live entertainment complex in the Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The building opened on October 26, 1966, as Theatre Atlanta, a non-profit repertory theater built as a memorial to Helen Lee Cartledge, who died in the 1962 Orly air disaster. It was rebranded Center Stage in the early 1980s and has operated primarily as a music venue since, while also hosting comedy, professional wrestling, and television and film production. The complex comprises three rooms under one roof: Center Stage Theater (capacity approximately 1,050), the largest and oldest of the three; The Loft (650), a standing-room space added in 2005; and Vinyl (300), the smallest room, focused on local and regional acts. Since 2009 all three have operated under the Center Stage name and have been run by Rival Entertainment, an independent Atlanta concert promotion company formed in 2004. Beyond live music, the building has had a varied institutional history: it housed Atlanta's short-lived Video Music Channel in the early 1980s, served as the primary taping location for World Championship Wrestling's television programming from 1989 to 1992, and has hosted recording sessions, television specials, and an annual progressive-metal festival, ProgPower USA. WWE has used the venue periodically for NXT television tapings since 2018, including the 2025 NXT The Great American Bash. The Theatre Atlanta company was founded in 1957 as a professional repertory troupe. Its dedicated home at 1374 West Peachtree Street was financed largely by Frania Tye Lee as a memorial to her daughter, Helen Lee Cartledge, who served as the first president of the company's Women's Guild. Cartledge died, along with her husband, in the crash of Air France Flight 007 at Orly Airport near Paris on June 3, 1962, one of 130 people killed; 106 of the victims were members of the Atlanta Art Association, who were returning from a month-long, association-sponsored tour of European art collections. Lee,