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Establishing The Longest Run In Florida
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St. Petersburg Little Theatre was founded in 1925 as the Sunshine Players by Dorothy Meadows. The name was later changed to The Players Club. In 1933, the current name - St. Petersburg Little Theatre (SPLT) - was adopted.
SPLT was chartered as a non-profit organization in 1937 to produce amateur theatricals. At the same time it was given the exclusive right to use the name "Little Theatre" in the city of St. Petersburg, in the light of the fact that the term "little theatre" was an inherent name associated with a nationwide movement in the 1920's and 1930's. |
Girl Crazy - 1988 |
Originally, plays were produced for one or two nights, presented at Mirror Lake Junior High School. Admission was thirty-five cents. The first production was The Poor Nut. In the late 1930's, an old grist mill on 2nd Avenue North was purchased for $3,600 to be used as storage space. Thanks to the cooperation from local trade unions, as stage was built, plumbing installed and the exterior plastered.
The American Legion donated wooden seats from their old outdoor arena. This new facility opened in June 1944, with a production of Liliom. Admission was raised to fifty cents - servicemen were admitted free. In the same year, all 302 seats were sold out for the run of the three performances of each play.
In these early years, SPLT became the darling of local newspapers - it was the "in" thing to belong to the Little Theatre. A picture in SPLT's archives shows a banner stretched across Central Avenue at 5th Street, proclaiming "Little Theatre Week". Such popularity caused membership to be closed and a waiting list created.
In the 1950's, property was purchased at SPLT's present location on 31st Street South. Financed by the sale of bonds to it's members, the building is one of the few facilities in the Tampa Bay area erected as a theater. The first production in the new space was Teahouse of the August Moon in September 1958, and the season was expanded to accommodate six plays. In 1966 SPLT produced it's first musical, The Pajama Game. The mortgage was burned in 1983.
The building has undergone two major renovations: The costume room and "green room" were added, and the original screened-in verandah was enclosed to form the lobby in the 1960's. In 1994, the new ADA-compliant restroom wing was constructed. The new lobby doubled as theater space in 1997, with the world premiere of the musical Jung at Heart. This production also generated a tradition of lobby shows.
Throughout it's history as Florida's oldest, continuously operating community theater, SPLT has presented up to six major varied shows per season, offered classes, extended opportunity, reached out to the community and provided the best entertainment to patrons and friends in Tampa Bay. |
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