Bradford Little Theatre was given a warm welcome by the community as the group showed off its new home with an open house on Monday evening.
The theater group hosted a performance by local band Chordiac Arrest on its new stage, served refreshments and played a bit of trivia as part of the house-warming event.
Dubbed Togi’s Playhouse, the building is located at 18 Welch Ave., behind Togi’s Family Restaurant on East Main Street. It was once the home of the Bradford Baptist Church and East End Presbyterian Church.
BLT occupied a location on Main Street for about two-and-half-years, but didn’t have the luxury of space or a stage.
With seating for more than 150 people, the former East Bradford church building provides plenty of room for actors and audience members. The facility includes the sanctuary, social hall, among other areas.
Jessica Ann Persons, a BLT board member, said told The Era it was a lot of work to get moved in and make the space viewable to the public, but the group couldn’t be more excited to have a place to call their own.
“We had a couple of big moving days, and Kessel (Construction) and Rexel donated trucks to help us. The next major step was organizing everything, then we painted the stage black to make it look more like a theater.”
The old church building still boasts tall, colorful painted glass windows on either side of the stage.
Eventually, Persons said they plan to paint the entire room black and even extend and build up the stage to make it bigger for performances.
Persons said the neighborhood has been very welcoming, with nearby residents popping in to check out the new space. “A few people have just dropped by to greet us and take a tour,” she related. “They’ve been wonderful to us, and they’ve said they’re glad to see something come into this building.”
Persons was excited Monday evening to be able to show the progress they’ve made to even more people. “A lot of people are very visual, they need to see something to appreciate it — especially theater people,” she said. “It’s great to be able to show the space and give them an idea of what we’re capable of and what we’ll be able to do now that we’re here.”
This is the first time BLT has had it’s own location and stage to use as a venue for shows, according to Persons.
“I’ve only been with BLT for a few years and it’s amazing for me; people who have been part of it for much longer are overjoyed,” she exclaimed. “There are a lot of benefits to this.”
Persons said the theater group throughout the years has relied on other venues, which can result in last minute changes that make putting on a performance more difficult. “Anything can happen,” she stated. “Something can happen with the stage, the lights… or you can lose the venue, anything really.
“The other real advantage is we can rehearse on the stage we’ll be performing on, so we won’t need to spend time getting used to the new stage and amending everything we’ve been working on to fit it,” Persons explained.
She said the building has an elevator so they won’t have to “lug things up and down stairs anymore,” and it is handicap accessible so everyone will be able to see their shows.
With the new space, Persons said the theater group is hoping to do even more, possibly including a children’s camp in the summer and special engagements. “We’d like to open the space to be available to other arts groups like the Pitt Improv Theater or Olean (N.Y.) theater groups,” she related.
Jason Shick, a performer with Bradford Little Theatre, said he is very pleased with having a new space.
“I think it’s great — it will give us space to practice and the room to grow,” Shick told The Era. “It’s a fresh new beginning, and I hope it will bring some fresh faces in to volunteer.”
BLT’s next show will be “Aesop’s Fable-ous Christmas Tree,” written by Michael Gravois and slated for Dec. 4, 5 and 6 at Togi’s Playhouse. The play will be a mashup of Aesop’s fables and several Christmas stories.
Auditions for the half-scripted/half improv Christmas show will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday and from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the new building.
Meanwhile, “The Awesome 80s Prom,” an interactive blast-from-the-past party written by Ken Davenport, is slated for February — sponsored by A Slice of the 80s and to be hosted by Afterwards Club under Beefeaters Restaurant on Congress Street.
The comedy “Death and Taxes” by Pat Cook will be staged at Togi’s Playhouse in April, promising twists and turns as the audience attempts to figure out who committed a murder after a small-town city council meeting.
More information about BLT is available atwww.bradfordlittletheatre.org or the organization’s Facebook page.
