Cape Rep Theatre
Mission/Vision:
Cape Rep Theatre is an artist driven company committed to providing professional creative opportunities for the artists of our community, wonderfully talented people who choose to make their homes right here on Cape Cod. To ensure their artistic growth and keep our productions fresh, we invite professionals from the wider world of theater to work with us, and so we are able to produce a great variety of stories with a growing family of artists. We place value on the art of theater and appreciate its importance in the lives of both our artists and our audiences. We think this makes for a dynamic, eclectic organization with art at its center.
We are a company dedicated to great stories. We read and read and read some more, all in an effort to choose plays and musicals that speak to us for our time. We commission new work, often written by local playwrights, and then we produce it—stories you’ve never seen before, sparked from the imaginations of the collaborators involved. Heady stuff.
Our mission is two-fold. As stewards of our historic property within Nickerson State Park, we are committed to the restoration and rehabilitation of the grounds and structures in our care. This dedication to the preservation of these historic structures is equally as important and exciting to us. Remnants of times and people past will always exist here to remind us that we are connected, that we come from a past, live in the present and bequeath a future, that we need to contribute not just possess, to create not just consume.
Founded in 1986, we came to our home in Brewster in 1992 on the grounds of what was formerly Camp Monomoy. Our first restoration project was renovating the Camp Chapel into our Outdoor Theater, Cape Cod’s only outside theater. In 1997, we opened the Indoor Theater in what was the Camp’s Dining Hall. After three years of community fundraising that totaled $670,000, in 2010 we reclaimed the historic Crosby Cape House, the gateway to our campus, restoring it into housing for both local and visiting artists with a much needed community room where we can be found working, rehearsing, performing and teaching classes in acting, directing and playwriting. Our next project is the rehabilitation of the historic Crosby Barn, which currently serves as the storage space for our theatrical assets. Once complete, a new basement will become the home for those assets and the upstairs will become a beautifully restored Barn to be used to expand our programming in performance, education, and community building.
We produce a 4- to 5-play Indoor Theater season running May through December and in the summer, we offer professional shows for children in our Outdoor Theater. Our attendance has exploded from 3,000 to 21,000 and our subscription base from 85 to 800 in the last ten years. We attract a very loyal local audience that hails from the mid-Cape to Provincetown including second-home owners from Boston and the South Shore. We also have a second audience as a result of the tourist industry on Cape Cod, many of them coming to us whenever they vacation here and others new to us each season. Lastly, we have a tremendously loyal family audience that faithfully sees the summer children’s shows in our Outdoor Theater year after year.
The educational arm of our institution provides professional theater training to high school and adult students across Cape Cod with classes in acting, directing and playwriting and master classes in specific areas of theater. The work of our student playwrights is showcased at Cape Rep and students have taken their plays to competitions and showcases across the Cape. We offer private coaching sessions and have guided many local students through their college and graduate school audition processes. We also open up our theater and offer technical guidance to drama club productions from our local middle and high schools.
Young artists in our Internship Program are mentored by guest directors and our artistic staff and learn their craft through production. We shape our internship program to the needs of the interns, offering master classes in acting and directing, and professional training in stage management. Our interns have gone on to become the production stage managers, directors and actors for our main stage shows and to professional careers across the country.
Our Outreach Program features company members in musical revues at senior centers, libraries and nursing homes across the Cape. We recently sent 5 artists from our company to the Riverview School, a school for students with complex language, learning and cognitive disabilities, for an 8-month residency in support of their annual play. Over 50 students participated in this project, which included class work, rehearsal, and performance. Students participated in design, production, acting, and music.
Whether on stage or off, our journey is and will continue to be, down roads to epic adventure, to places we have never been, with people we have never met, experiencing situations and moral dilemmas that we know in our heart will always connect us across time and space to the rest of humanity.
