Fort Wayne Youtheatre: forty students, one dollar, seventy-five actors

1934-

The founding, two ways: The Youtheatre's house history gives its 1934 founding to a committee: Dr. Clive McAllister, president of the Old Fort Players (now the Civic Theatre), appointed one to create a junior or children's theatre branch, on the philosophy that dramatic instruction would develop children's poise, better diction and self-esteem. The house's own federal filing names founders instead: Mrs. Chan Ray and Mrs. Lester Jacobs, who founded it in 1934 as part of the Old Fort Players. This record prints both, the committee the house celebrates and the two women its filing names, and does not choose between its own sources.

The first season: The numbers survive because they are wonderful. The first class enrolled 40 students, each paying just one dollar for eight classes; the first production, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, put a cast of 75 young people on the Majestic Theatre's stage. Children's theatre in Fort Wayne was from its first year a producing house, not a classroom with a recital: children performing for family audiences was the entertainment, for the families in the seats as much as the children on the stage.

The wandering years: In 1954 the fire department deemed the Majestic unsafe for children, and the Children's Theatre spent ten years at various locations in the city before rejoining the Civic Theatre at the Old Palace Theatre under its lasting name, the Fort Wayne Youtheatre. In 1973 both organizations moved to the Arts United Center on East Main Street. The house history dates its autonomy to 1983 and its education guides and federal filing to 1984; the bracket stands as [1983/1984] until the house reconciles its own record. What is not bracketed is the standing: by its own account, carried by the city's visitors bureau, the Youtheatre is the fifth oldest active children's theatre in the nation, and under Broadway actor Harvey Cocks, executive director from 1978 for more than forty years, generations of Fort Wayne children learned the trade in it.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Youtheatre, Our History (fwyt.org) and its education guides (the 1934 committee, the first class and production, the Majestic ruling, the Palace return, the 1973 move, the autonomy year as given at 1983).
2. Fort Wayne Youtheatre Inc., Form 990, tax year 2022 (the Ray and Jacobs founding line; autonomy at 1984; the fifth-oldest standing).
3. Visit Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne theatre community account (the Youtheatre since 1934; the Arts United Center home).