Freeport Theatre Festival

The Freeport Theatre Festival was founded in 1989 and is based in the rural Allegheny Kiski Valley at the northernmost tip of the Laurel Highlands. 

In 1989, those first stouthearted audiences parked in a hayfield-cum parking lot across the road. Upon entering the theatre they walked on a gravel and dirt floor, passed a folding card table where the stage manager would call the light and sound cues—with a whisper–and sat on unpadded folding chairs on loan from a local church in Freeport staggered in rows in front of a blank canvass—a black, bare stage. Port-a-potties served as bathrooms. Tents and tarps behind and within the theatre served as dressing rooms. A stroll behind the theatre before a performance would find the play’s characters pacing the open hillside, reciting lines, and adjusting costumes.

Today, a brightly lit parking area adjacent to the theatre has replaced the hayfield across the road and provides a much safer parking space for our patrons. The gravel floor has been cemented; raked and upholstered (comfortable) theatre seats have replaced the folding chairs. The stage manager now calls the plays from a raised eagle’s nest, a self-contained balcony, if you will, equipped with LED Color Source Console and space for a stage manager and two assistants. Now the actors enjoy the privacy of a spacious dressing room and an all-weather picket fenced outdoor green.