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The mission of the Peterborough Players:
The Peterborough Players enriches the human experience by producing quality live professional theatre, developing and training theatre artists, and offering New Hampshire a wide variety of performing arts events. |
The Peterborough Players produces five Main Stage shows each summer season, which runs from mid-June through the end of August.
The theatre was founded in 1933 by Edith Bond Stearns, a single mother of three, who was a woman of imagination and vision with a profound love for the arts. When she purchased the Hadley Farm, it was abandoned and had no electricity or running water.
From those humble beginnings grew a professional theater of excellence. The farm, including the 18th-century barn, has seen several major renovations and has been converted to an intimate 250-seat, state-of-the-art theatre, rehearsal hall, offices, restrooms, dressing rooms, and lobby spaces newly created and/or modernized. The theatre is air-conditioned and heated for year-round use. The barn and its outbuildings provide a uniquely charming theatrical venue, including a flower-decked patio and landscaped grounds, where patrons can dine before a performance. The theatre is wheelchair accessible, has handicapped parking, and hearing assistance is available.
There have been many unforgettable moments at the theater -- like an early production of Our Town with the author, Thornton Wilder, in the audience! Throughout the decades, audiences have been entertained with classic drama, comedy, musical and farce, enlightened by modern works, and enthralled by one-man shows like Will Rogers with James Whitmore, and Paul Robeson with Avery Brooks.
What compelled this mother of three children, with few financial resources and no steady income, during the deepest grips of the Depression, to establish a theatre in the backwoods of southwest New Hampshire? We may never know the full answer, but we’re glad Edith Bond Stearns created the Players! For in the deepest, darkest woods, perhaps art shines the brightest light.
The theatre was founded in 1933 by Edith Bond Stearns, a single mother of three, who was a woman of imagination and vision with a profound love for the arts. When she purchased the Hadley Farm, it was abandoned and had no electricity or running water.
From those humble beginnings grew a professional theater of excellence. The farm, including the 18th-century barn, has seen several major renovations and has been converted to an intimate 250-seat, state-of-the-art theatre, rehearsal hall, offices, restrooms, dressing rooms, and lobby spaces newly created and/or modernized. The theatre is air-conditioned and heated for year-round use. The barn and its outbuildings provide a uniquely charming theatrical venue, including a flower-decked patio and landscaped grounds, where patrons can dine before a performance. The theatre is wheelchair accessible, has handicapped parking, and hearing assistance is available.
There have been many unforgettable moments at the theater -- like an early production of Our Town with the author, Thornton Wilder, in the audience! Throughout the decades, audiences have been entertained with classic drama, comedy, musical and farce, enlightened by modern works, and enthralled by one-man shows like Will Rogers with James Whitmore, and Paul Robeson with Avery Brooks.
What compelled this mother of three children, with few financial resources and no steady income, during the deepest grips of the Depression, to establish a theatre in the backwoods of southwest New Hampshire? We may never know the full answer, but we’re glad Edith Bond Stearns created the Players! For in the deepest, darkest woods, perhaps art shines the brightest light.