Westchester County’s oldest, longest running Professional Theater.

 

The Schoolhouse Theater & Arts Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, is a *venerable cultural center devoted to professional theater at the highest possible standard.  We are committed to bringing new, innovative and ground breaking programs and plays to the community.  It is a place where new work is explored, and a place where things begin.  Additionally, our galleries host local artists, sculptors, and photographers from all over the county.  

 

Through classes for children, live theater, live music, Lee's Cafe (events showcasing young musical local talent in our art galleries), comedy, slam poetry, story telling and creative programs, we have sought to be a landmark home for all of the arts in Westchester County.

 

Lee Pope is the legend behind The Schoolhouse Theater & Arts Center. Pope, the theater's founder, transformed an old elementary school building (1925) into a freshly minted visual arts center in Croton Falls in 1983, turning classrooms into galleries and studio spaces showing the paintings and sculpture of many Westchester's most acclaimed artists. At that time, the cafeteria/gym was simply a white-walled room with twelve borrowed lights and no risers. In 1986, Jack Palance's daughter Brooke and actor/producer Michael Wilding (son of Elizabeth Taylor) performed Bedroom Farce and the curtain went up on Westchester's oldest non-profit professional theater thirty-five years ago!

 

The Schoolhouse has been honored by visits from a number of theater luminaries including playwrights Jules Feiffer, John Barton, George Furth, Tina Howe, Michael Weller, and Paul Zindel, who all came to see productions of their work and lend support to our theater.

 

Legendary New York critic Alvin Klein, (president of The Drama Desk), who wrote more than 40 reviews for the New York Times, summed it up best: "It's one of my favorite theaters.  A jewel. 99 seats. There's nothing like it.  Where else are you going to see Albee, Saroyan or Williams?  Abundance by Beth Henley?  They're gutsy!"

 

We have successfully launched seven productions to Off-Broadway: B.H. Barry’s Enlightenment of Mr. Mole, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Ingmar Bergman's Nora, S.N. Behrman's Biography, Elaine Del Valle's Brownsville Bred, Stevie Holland and Gary William Friedman’s Love, Linda, which subsequently moved to The Triad, and L.O.V.E.R by Lois Robbins, which had an acclaimed stay at The Pershing Square Signature Theater in their intimate Griffin Stage on 42nd St last year.  Another charmer, Just Jim Dale (starring Jim Dale) made the reverse commute from The Roundabout to The Schoolhouse last year...plays in future development after a successful inauguration at The Schoolhouse include Jesse Kornbluth’s 2019

success The Color of Light and multiple Emmy Award-winner Dorothy Lyman’s Gladstone Hollow.

 

In 2018, The Schoolhouse Theater & Arts Center Founder, Leandra “Lee” Pope received Arts Westchester's coveted 2018 Lifetime Arts Community Award!

(*The New York Times)