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1927–1973
Founding: The company's own historic overview begins in 1927, when the Fort Wayne Community Theatre Guild was formed and produced two shows — one in a local high school, one in a neighborhood church (the shows were Seven Keys to Baldpate and The Charm School). In 1928 a second group, the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre Guild, made up of many of the same people, began producing three to five shows a season with no permanent home. In 1931 the group took the name Old Fort Players.
The Majestic years: In 1933 — the company's overview gives 1933; ACGSI's summary of the company's history says 1931 — the Players moved into the 800-seat Majestic Theatre downtown. The stage, 80 feet wide and 40 deep, was large enough that a 1930s production of Ben Hur ran live horses on a treadmill for the chariot race. The company leased the building at first and bought it on a mortgage in 1940. Acting classes offered since 1933 were formalized in 1940 — scenic and lighting design, voice and diction, makeup, set construction, acting, pantomime — and the children's theatre audience grew from 900 in 1933 to more than 10,000 in 1946. In 1940 the state awarded tax-exempt status and the company took its lasting name, the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre. The Anthony Awards, the company's volunteer honors, were given for the first time in 1953, and the Women's Guild was formed in 1955.
Homeless again: A total of 231 productions were mounted at the Majestic before the city condemned the building and tore it down in 1957. The company moved, temporarily as it thought, into the Palace Theatre on East Washington Boulevard (ACGSI's account adds that the company went by Civic Playhouse in the Palace years), expecting to land in the Fine Arts Foundation's planned building. That building never came to be, and the Civic remained at the Palace until 1969, then spent three hard years in the roughly 150-seat Maiden Lane building. In 1973 it moved at last into the new Performing Arts Center — the Arts United Center, its home base ever since.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne Civic Theatre, "A Brief Historic Overview of the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre" (fwcivic.org) — the 1927 and 1928 guilds, the Old Fort Players name, the Majestic purchase and productions, the Palace and Maiden Lane years, the 1973 move.
- ACGSI, "Civic Theatre," Places of Allen County — the 1931 Majestic date and the Civic Playhouse name (variants); ACPL Genealogy Center — the company's archived program collection, 600-plus programs from 1933.