Venue: Theatre Memphis
Town: Memphis, US

Theatre Memphis is a non-profit community theatre located in Memphis, Tennessee. The building houses two separate stages - the Lohrey Theatre main stage, which seats up to 411, and the smaller black-box theatre, the Next Stage, which seats approximately 100. In the holiday season of 1920, Mrs. Fairfax Proudfit Walkup called a group of interested friends to form a "little theatre." The Memphis Little Theatre Players was thus founded in 1920 and presented three one-act plays ("The Dream," "Aren't They Wonders," and "Helena's Husband") as its first performance on May 20, 1921 in Germania Hall at Third Street and Jefferson Avenue. The company was chartered on January 17, 1922 for the purpose of "producing plays, encouraging the art and the writing of plays, and the uplift of the drama and its allied arts..." Later stagings occurred in the auditorium of the Nineteenth Century Club on Third Street and at St. Agnes Conservatory on Vance. In 1925, a merger was made with the Drama League (the local chapter of a national organization that supported the theatrical arts), and a new Memphis Little Theatre was born. Also in 1925, the Theatre opened its doors to its first permanent home, named the Stable Playhouse, a 90-seat venue housed in a former stable on the grounds of the James Lee Art Academy at Adams and Orleans. Through the generosity of many Memphians who gave "One Hundred Dollar" subscriptions, and through the courtesy of the Memphis Park Commission, in October 1929 the Memphis Little Theatre moved into its second permanent home (the Pink Palace Playhouse) a 250-seat venue in the east wing of the Memphis Museum of Natural History and Industrial Arts (now known as the Pink Palace), the unfinished mansion of Piggly Wiggly founder, Clarence Saunders. The theatre operated in the shallow end of the swimming pool of the mansion, a suggestion from Mrs. Clarence (Carolyn) Saunders). In September 1970, the Commercial Appeal announced that the Little Theatre was embarking on a "m