About Amherst Community Theater - Amherst Community Theater

Our Mission — Amherst Community Theater Board — Auditions and Casting — Is My Child Ready for Amherst Community Theater (What Parents of Young Performers Should Know) — What is Mandatory Volunteering for Cast Members? — Amherst Community Theater Voices

Our Mission

Amherst Community Theater is dedicated to producing high quality musical theater to engage children, adults, and families, both as participants and as audience members. We strive to provide opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to perform and to work creatively behind the scenes to bring a show from concept to reality. Amherst Community Theater is truly a team effort. It is community.

“The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.” – Oscar Wilde

It is this spirit which, each year, draws some 150 members of our community together as one in a creative endeavor that we see as nothing less than a miracle. Every January we present a full-scale musical at Bowker Auditorium, a beautiful 600 seat auditorium at UMass. We strive for a multi-generational and multi-ethnic cast of approximately 65 from across the Pioneer Valley, ages 7 and up. We have a reputation for elaborate, beautiful sets, impressive choreography, live orchestra and stunning costumes. Our auditions are in September and rehearsals begin in early October. The fall months are filled with set building, costuming and all aspects of preparation for this major production.

Since 1993, Amherst Community Theater has presented – and reprised – war horses like Peter Pan, Oliver!, and The Music Man. But we have also taken risks and excelled artistically with lesser-known shows such as Anne of Green Gables and The Secret Garden. While our eye must always be on the bottom line and our ears tuned to your applause, we are mindful of the delicate balance between popularity and artistic worth.

Each spring, we sponsor a week-long children’s theater opportunity in conjunction with Missoula Children’s Theatre (www.mctinc.org ), a non-profit theater group out of Missoula, Montana. A pair of young actors/directors arrives in town with all the sets, costumes and scripts to produce a one-hour show. In the span of one week, they hold auditions, select a cast, rehearse and put on 2 performances on Saturday. It is a truly amazing process to observe. The participants (children and teens in grades K-12) love it and it is a fantastic way for young kids to begin to explore the theater. It is an amazing and fun filled week.

Amherst Community Theater receives no funding from the Amherst town budget, and our organization is staffed by a dedicated group of volunteers, many of whom receive no payment or stipend for their efforts. In this spirit we invite our audience to join us in supporting Amherst Community Theater with a financial contribution. You may also donate to our Theater Access Program to ensure that our shows can be enjoyed by all members of our community.

We, the Board, are committed to the survival of Amherst’s community theater. We intend to build on this its reputation for excellence while keeping it an affordable entertainment.

Your financial support will allow us to continue to bring you high quality live theater, provide our young actors and actresses with outstanding opportunities to perform and to continue to provide access to our shows to those who cannot afford it. If you want to support this vital and uplifting work, click here to learn about donating to Amherst Community Theater.

If you would like to be a part of the creative team for a future Amherst Community Theater production, please send an email at any time of year to chair@amherstacts.org

We thank you for your patronage and your ongoing support!

Amherst Community Theater acknowledges, respects, and celebrates the diversity within our organization and local community. We seek to create theater that enables people of different genders, races, cultures, sexual orientations, levels of physical ability, ages, beliefs, and socioeconomic backgrounds to be represented in our productions.

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