Artists Civic Theatre and Studio

About Us:
The theatre was built in 1903, from all accounts and research.  Sammy Bono, a long-ago city councilman whose family lived on the corner just east of the theatre, recalled it,  the street, the businesses, and the people who lived here when he was growing up.  Railroad Avenue was the main street in town, and the movie was a major factor in entertainment.  He remembered the grocery store on the corner attached to the building, the clothing stores east of the theatre, and the Sanitary Bakery west of the theatre where bread, cookies, and cakes were baked and sold during a time when I-10 had not cut off the upper portions of Kirkman, Reid, Moss, Ford, and Louisiana Avenue from the southern parts.  The streets ran from 12th Street to the railroad tracks, continuously.

 When sound was introduced to the movies, the Louisianne, as it was called then, converted to that technology.  In the Thirties, the movie house became The Delta which it remained except for a very brief time in the early eighties prior to it being purchased for ACTS’ use.

 The stage was built over three nights by former ACTS board presidents in preparation for the opening of the first fully staged production in the building, SCROOGE.  The crew was straw-bossed by Mary June Malus, an original founding member.  On  the building crew were Gus Quinn, Jr., Harold Backrach, Perry Dickinson, Donald Saulnier, Daniel Ieyoub,  and many others who labored to have the space ready.  A little later,   MASS APPEAL was staged at the new theatre, and the following year regular seasons began with the first production of SCROOGE. Robert Kidder was responsible for putting the seats in place in the theatre.  They had been acquired from the Paramount Theatre on Ryan Street when it closed.  For its first two productions in the theatre, metal folding chairs were used, and were they cold!

 The theatre building, the side grocery store, and a clothing store down the street east of the theatre composed the original property purchases made by Mr. Pettaway and Mr. Saulnier.

 Pettaway quickly bought the land on the west side adjacent to the theatre to allow easy access to the building from the back parking lot and had the fences put into place around the property.

 Currently, the ACTS Theatre building is the only theatre structure built prior to World War II still standing; most other ones have been ‘remodeled’ into parking lots! World War I troops passed this theatre in trains on their way to France. World War II military passed the theatre in trains on their way to both Japan and Germany. And those going to Korea and Vietnam also passed this way. Since that time, train travel has become very limited, but they do still pass ACTS.

 The theatre is historic: over one hundred years old. It was meaningful to the city as a movie house, and has become a place for live theatre entertainment since l982.

 ACTS only needs building funding, assistance, grants, stipends, to realize the great potential the structures hold as a theatre center.