Theater
The Allens Lane Theater typically presents four mainstage plays each season, continuing a long-standing community theater program that has seen thousands of artists and audience members pass through its doors.
The 2023-2024 mainstage theater is on pause. We are restructuring and reimagining our theater program this year, and in the meantime, we will be presenting a wide variety of performing arts events in our new Live! At The Lane series.
Live! At The Lane
Live! At The Lane is a performing arts series featuring a variety of events, including music, dance, spoken word, comedy, and theater. Taking place in our historic Café Theater, the program is an accessible, culturally relevant celebration that centers joy, offering a broad diversity of performing arts for audiences of all ages. The series will provide a vibrant space for community events that showcase our community’s talents.
The series will support local and emerging artists by providing opportunities to perform and collaborate in our historic theater space, as well as exposure to new audiences; and create partnerships with local arts organizations and theater ensembles that will mutually benefit and continue to develop a rich arts and culture scene in Northwest Philadelphia. As a creative hub and high-quality space in Mt. Airy and the greater Philadelphia region, Live! At the Lane builds upon our 70-year tradition of being a home for the performing arts.
The Karen Smith Experience
January 13th, 7-9 pm
Enjoy the Karen Smith Experience featuring Colin Myers on Keyz, Ikechi Onyenaka on Sax, Sweet Corey Bey on bass and Karen “Magic Fingaz” Smith with special guest Spoken Word Artist, Fe Fe Love. A True Love Fest that will have you on your feet!
BYO Dinner and Beverages!
Karen “Magic Fingaz” Smith, Brooklyn Native, Philly Resident, is a Professional Percussionist, Playwright, Poet, Director, Teaching Artist, Curator, and now Pie-Maker!!! Karen is a recipient of several grants including the PEW Fellowship, Leeway Foundation’s Art and Change and Illuminate the Arts Grants. Ms. Smith is the Founder, Artistic Director and Lead Percussionist of Weez the Peeples and Sistahs Laying Down Hands Collectives. Called “Sounds of Freedom” by Philadelphia Inquirer, Ms. Smith has worked with many individual artists, groups, theatrical production companies, and studio recordings and currently curating a project this October with Breast Cancer Surgeon, Dr. Monique Gary called ‘Breastival’ a week long of events centered around Breast Cancer Awareness. “Collaborations are the essence of my creative Journey and I have worked with many artists, it is an extra special sharing of energies with the multi-tatented, Blew Kind. Possible is Possible is my daily mantra!”
Reader’s Theater: Black Roses in the Garden
Written by Camille E. James
February 3rd, 7 pm
1970s – Harlem – during the second wave of Women’s Rights. This play gives the podium to the hidden voices of Black queer women who expressed their ideas, desires, and pleasures in a now dwindling lesbian bar culture. In a hidden, dank, dimly lit bar, we join four women on a journey of laughter, determination, and courage in love and sisterhood that feeds them at the root.
Jazzentine’s Concert
Robert Boyd Jr. Quintet
February 17th, 7-9 pm
Live! At The Lane presents Jazzentine’s Concert featuring the Robert Boyd Jr. Quintet. Join us on February 17th, 7-9 PM for a beautiful celebration of love as we listen to jazz, cabaret style. Enjoy sounds from Robert Boyd on saxophones, João on piano, Tim Ragsdale on bass, Wayne Smith Jr on drums, and Z on Vocals. Bring your dinner and drinks, and enjoy the night of easy-going entertainment, great company, and of course, love.
Funny Gals: Dirty Old Town Comedy Showcase
March 2nd, 8 pm
Live! At The Lane presents Funny Gals: Dirty Old Town Comedy Showcase! Celebrating all things funny and fem, this all-female line-up of Philly’s favorites will make you laugh, cry, and laugh again. Enjoy an evening in our historic cabaret theater, filled with laughter, food and drinks. BYO food + drinks!
Hosted by Anna Gallagher.
Featuring: Finessica, Peggy O’Leary, Rachel Fogletto, and Emily Epstein White.
Produced by: Dirty Old Town Comedy Showcase
Dr. Sketchy’s Art is Magic
March 8th, 7-9 pm
Live! At the Lane and Dr.Sketchy’s Presents: “Art is Magic” with model & magician, Lindsey Noel. Dr. Sketchy’s is the world’s premier alternative drawing movement. Artists gather in over a hundred cities (including New York, London, Las Vegas, and Tokyo) to sketch glamorous, subcultural models and compete in drawing contests in an atmosphere of artistic calamity. Philadelphia branch director Candy Mayhem hosts sessions open to all artistic levels quarterly at Arch Enemy Arts in Old City.
There will be Sketching! Contests! Prizes! Magic!!
The Trouble with Harry
Directed by Noël Butcher Hanley
April 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21
Fridays and Saturdays 8:00 pm and Sundays 2:00 pm
Blackburn Theatrical Productions in partnership with Allens Lane Art Center presents the world premiere of the theatre adaptation of The Trouble With Harry, the 1950 novel written by Jack Trevor Story, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name.
The Trouble With Harry, devised by Noël Butcher Hanley and adapted from the novel by Jack Trevor Story by Josh Hitchens, is a delightful mystery placed in the English countryside.
A group of townspeople pull together to help each other deal with a mysterious crime, bury (and re-bury) a body, and throw the police off the scent of any wrongdoing–all the while learning about one another and themselves.
A quirky and heartfelt tale of acceptance and redemption, watch hope bloom within the hearts of an unlikely group of individuals as they collectively pursue the truth about Harry.
Starring: Dailyn Roye, Tom Keels, Janet Wasser, Samantha Simpson, Susan Mattson, Samuel Fernandez, Matthew Thompson, Larry Arrigale
Understudy: Heather Osborne
Reader’s Theater: Eve In Paradise
Written by Megan Edelman
May 4th, 7 pM
Eve in Paradise is an adaptation and a memoir. Eve is a biblical troublemaker, a seventeenth-century puritanical ideal, and a 21st-century intersectional feminist, who has lost her faith. The audience finds Eve embodying Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and cutting it with scenes from her own life. As she grapples with the original text, she shares her journey as a child of the catechism, a questioning teenager, and an adult who strives to find the beauty not in God, but in humanity.
Motherly Love Cabaret
May 18th, 7-9 PM
Barrymore award winner Jennie Eisenhower directs a cast of veteran Philadelphia theatre artists as they explore the ups, downs, ins and outs of motherhood through songs and stories. Come join us for an evening of music while supporting an important cause. All funds raised will go directly to Moms Demand Action, a nonprofit dedicated to anti-gun legislation.
Enchantment Theatre Company: The Brave Little Tailor
June 1, 7 pm & June 2, 2 pm
Please sit back, relax and welcome Enchantment Theatre Company as they perform The Brave Little Tailor!
In Enchantment Theatre Company’s production, you’ll see our hero be thrust into a tale of many daring deeds. The Tailor is not brawny, but he is certainly brainy, and his cleverness gets him out of several sticky situations. You’ll see the Tailor fall in love with the Princess (who is the true hero of the story – she may even slay the dragon). And while our hero may be able to outsmart a pair of goofy giants, a wild rhinoceros and even the King, you’ll see how the power of honesty and accepting yourself brings ultimate happiness to the Tailor.
After the show you’ll have the chance to meet the actors and ask questions.
History
Since its establishment in 1953, Allens Lane Art Center has been a vital cornerstone in the Mount Airy, Germantown, and Greater Philadelphia communities with the mission of Growing Together Through the Arts. Allens Lane typically presents four Mainstage productions each season, continuing a long-standing community theater program that has seen thousands of artists and audience members pass through its doors. We are committed to producing purposeful, challenging, and unique theater experiences including the best of contemporary drama, exciting new works, plays for young audiences, and boldly reimagined classics that reflect the rich diversity of the neighborhoods surrounding Allens Lane Art Center. In addition to our Mainstage season, we offer a Reader’s Theater program to present staged readings of new plays by local writers. The theater at Allens Lane aims to bring people of all ages together through the communal power of the arts and is committed to diverse representation in our productions both with the actors onstage and the artists working behind the scenes.
Theater Tickets
In-Person Individual Play Ticket Prices:
$20 General Admission
$15 Senior and Student Discount
Subscription Ticket Prices (includes Main Stage & Reader’s Theatre):
Current Season Subscription Rate: $100
Returning Season Subscription Rate: $80*
*Must have been a subscriber within the past 3 years
Tickets for Reader’s Theater and Alice in Wonderland are Pay-What-You-Wish.
Showtimes
Fridays & Saturdays @ 8:00pm
Sundays @ 2:00pm
Non-subscribers are let in 20 minutes prior to curtain for each performance. Subscribers are let in 30 minutes prior (a benefit of being a subscriber). Reservations for each performance are required. No physical tickets will be issued. Please give your reservation name at the box office when you arrive.
