Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Driving Entertainment and Education
Performing arts centers and theaters serve as anchors of culture and community engagement. These venues not only offer world-class entertainment but also serve as important gathering places that help foster local talent and enhance the community’s amenities.
Many venues have a fascinating past that has evolved to offer present-day programming, adapting from vaudeville theaters and silent movie palaces to state-of-the-art performance halls. These performing arts centers are worth visiting for both their impressive programming and their commitment to the arts.
In This Article
Santa Fe Playhouse
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Located within a historic adobe theater, the Santa Fe Playhouse reflects the city’s long-standing artistic ties to Northern New Mexico.
Founded in 1918 by writer and social activist Mary Austin, the Playhouse evolved through name changes, an original cast of performers known as the Santa Fe Players, and productions held at various temporary locations around Santa Fe.
Their annual Fiesta Melodrama features a farcical year-in-review of Santa Fe’s happenings, while 505 Alive! is a summer festival. Educational programming covers acting, playwriting, directing and stagecraft through youth camps and adult classes.
Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts
Raleigh, North Carolina
The Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts is actually four different venues in one! The center houses the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Meymandi Concert Hall, A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater and Kennedy Theatre, each of which collectively holds programming. Raleigh residents can also take advantage of the entertainment offered by the center’s home to four resident companies – Carolina Ballet, NC Opera, NC Symphony and PineCone – which regularly provide community and educational programming.
If that weren’t enough, the center even gets into the holiday spirit by partnering with the Downtown Raleigh Alliance to host the annual Downtown Tree Lighting and Menorah Lighting.
Count Basie Center for the Arts
Red Bank, New Jersey
This Red Bank institution, dating back to 1926, was originally known as the Reade’s Carlton Theater, offering vaudeville, films, concerts and other forms of entertainment.
By the mid-1960s, the Carlton fell into disrepair. In the next decade, the Monmouth County Arts Council was given a significant anonymous donation to purchase and preserve the building. Then, another major milestone occurred with the local act, Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band, taking the stage. A year later, the now-celebrity Springsteen returned for a performance dubbed “The Homecoming.”
Red Bank native William J. “Count” Basie gave his final performance there before he died in 1984, and the venue was renamed in his honor. Today, the Count Basie Center for the Arts is equipped with two stages, a rooftop bar and gathering space and the Grunin Arts Education Building, which houses the Turner Academy of the Arts, a classical music conservatory.
Dominion Energy Center
Richmond, Virginia
The Dominion Energy Center, conveniently located in downtown Richmond, comprises three venues and an educational space that serve the Richmond performing arts community. Opened in 2009, the center’s anchor is the Carpenter Theatre, a 1920s proscenium-style movie palace that now stages theatrical productions.
The Bob & Sally Mooney Hall hosts a variety of activities, concerts and community gatherings. At the same time, Libby S. Gottwald Playhouse is a black-box style theater used by Richmond Shakespeare and other local groups. An educational center holds a classroom, dance and video production studios and a digital arts lab.
The center also serves as the home to the Richmond Performing Arts Alliance’s BrightLights Education Initiatives, which reaches out to youth from under-resourced communities.
Hendricks Live!
Plainfield, Indiana
Opened in Spring 2024, this West Central Indiana newcomer coincides with the rapid growth of its surrounding community in providing an events and entertainment hub.
Sharing a building with the Plainfield Government Center, Hendricks Live! features a 600-seat proscenium performance hall, a 160-seat event space and an art showcase space. They all contribute to a year-round schedule of hosting regional and national acts, events and exhibits. Local performers include concerts by the Plainfield High School Band and the Hendricks Symphony, as well as plays presented by Hendricks Civic Theater.
Peace Center
Greenville, South Carolina
In the mid-1980s, this beloved performing arts center was spearheaded by a group of performing arts enthusiasts, and with a $10 million pledge of support from the Peace family, it helped bring back downtown Greenville. This project also involved revitalizing 19th-century industrial buildings for adaptive reuse, along with the construction of what’s now the Peace Concert Hall and Gunter Theatre.
Inside the Peace Center Concert Hall, Genevieve’s restaurant offers a seasonal, rotating menu of small plates and shareables for before or after the show. Other features include the Peace Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater and Huguenot Mill Loft, an upper-level events space overlooking the adjacent Reedy River. Their event calendar features touring productions of Broadway shows and musical acts spanning multiple genres and appealing to diverse audiences.
Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre
Moorhead, Minnesota
Often known by its initials, the Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre has been an artistic cornerstone in the Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo area since the mid-1940s.
Along with holding all-ages theater education programs, their event schedule includes classic plays, contemporary works, musicals, youth theatre and special events like improv nights and community showcases.
In May 2024, FMCT welcomed the groundbreaking of a future mixed-use building in downtown Fargo that will become its new space.
Benedum Center for the Performing Arts
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
As a Pittsburgh Cultural Trust theater, the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts is a cultural gem, dating back to 1928.
Billed as “Pittsburgh’s Palace of Amusement,” the building was originally named the Stanley Theater and underwent a name change in the 1970s, when it began hosting rock concerts. It was then given a $43 million restoration in the eighties to return this cultural treasure to its original glory. Today, this 2,889-seat theater, situated within Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, hosts concerts, Broadway musicals, and a diverse range of regional, national, and international performance arts groups.