Indiana Repertory Theatre

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Indiana Repertory Theatre, frequently abbreviated IRT, is a theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana that began as a genuine repertory theatre with its casts performing in multiple shows at once. It has subsequently become a regional theatre and a member of the League of Resident Theatres. A standard season typically consists of three plays on the smaller, upper stage (two intended for young audiences, one of which is usually an abridged Shakespeare play, unless one is in the mainstage season) and the bulk of its season (five plays and a holiday show, usually Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol) performed on the IRT Mainstage.

The theatre company has gone through two theatre buildings. It began in 1972 in The Athenaeum, which now holds the American Cabaret Theatre. In 1980, the IRT moved to its current home, The Indiana Theatre, a former Paramount Publix Theatre on 140 West Washington Street, built in 1927 and converted from a movie theater for IRT's use ^[1].

The Indiana Repertory Theatre

Among the better known actors that have performed multiple times at the theatre are Priscilla Lindsay, now the associate artistic director, Scott Wentworth, a founding member, and John Henry Redwood, who would later die when touring a one-man show he premiered in 2001 at Indiana Repertory, which commissioned it, Looking Over the President's Shoulder, by James Still, a true story of Alonzo Fields, who served as a butler to three presidents. Another playwright who has written works on IRT commissions is Charles Smith, including Les Trois Dumas and Sister Carrie, based on the novel by Indiana-born Theodore Dreiser. Johnny Lee Davenport, Deputy Marshal Henry of The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals, played Othello. Tim Grimm makes regular appearances in the theatre, often, but not always, as a rural sort of character. The current artistic director is Janet Allen.

The theatre is well-known in the state for their production of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol as adapted by Tom Haas, a late member of the former repertory company. It is a chamber theatre production modeled on David Edgar's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, that retains many of the story's darkest elements, such as the scene featuring Want and Ignorance that Dickens himself considered its heart, but is often omitted.

For the most part, the theatre stopped doing musicals in the 1990s, because Indianapolis has a number of professional and high-grade amateur theatres that do them, although they did world premiere the musical Captive Heart: The Frances Slocum Story (1999), by Jeff Hooper (book) and Bob Lucas (music and lyrics), based on the story of Maconaquah, which is part of the standard history curriculum in Indiana, and an Indiana premiere of a musical with a book by Wentworth, Enter the Guardsman, based on the Ferenc Molnár play, The Guardsman, with music by Craig Bohmler and lyrics by Marion Adler.

The theatre sponsors The Waldo M. and Grace C. Bonderman Playwriting For Youth National Symposium.