Metropolis Performing Arts Centre

Mission Statement:

Metropolis Performing Arts Centre provides professional entertainment and arts education, enriching our community.

Vision Statements:

 - To artistically lead our community as an exceptional performing arts and education center

 - To create an artistic, educational and collaborative home for performers, students and audiences members

 - To make the arts accessible to our broad and diverse community

 - To cultivate lifelong appreciation and involvement in the arts

 - To integrate the arts into the lives of our students, audiences and community members

History:

Metropolis Performing Arts Centre is a $22 million live entertainment and arts education facility with an annual budget of over $2.5 million, located in downtown Arlington Heights, Ill. and has quickly become one of Chicagoland's leading venues for quality programming. The complex is home to a 350 seat theater, ballroom, four classrooms and thirteen music studios. Metropolis offers a diverse array of Chicago's most talented performers and performance troupes, as well as national acts spanning virtually all performance genres - all under one roof. 

Launched in May 2000 as a for-profit organization, Metropolis completed its transformation to a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation in April 2002. Through the creation of our development, production and education departments and the establishment of a Board of Directors, Metropolis maintains an exceptional internal structure and nurtures innovative programs for the community to provide a center of cultural enlightenment. 

In January 2005 - after more than a year of negotiations - the Village of Arlington Heights completed the purchase of the Metropolis theater space, as well as a portion of the lobby, our second floor classrooms and office space. This promising partnership reinforces Performing Arts at Metropolis' proud leadership role in our community and the community's great expectations of us, which we will continue to meet and surpass.

In a typical season, we have over 300 performances of more than 40 different productions on our schedule, our School of the Performing Arts serves over 2,500 students, our Stories in Action! Series for kids gives more than 18,000 students an exciting theatre-going experience, and our Outreach programs bring the arts to students, individuals with special needs, seniors and hospice patients. Each season, we see over 70,000 patrons come through our doors, who, in turn, spend an additional approximate $1.6 million in the downtown Arlington Heights area. Metropolis continues to foster partnerships with a variety of businesses, schools and organizations, contributing to Arlington Heights and striving to grow as a community organization.