-- The Capitol Theatre -- 415 W. Main Street, Aberdeen, SD Home of the Aberdeen Community Theatre and the Capitol Cinema

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Presents
Two Encore Performances of
Honk!, the musical
By George Stiles and Anthony Drewe
Sunday & Monday, July 20 & 21 at 7:00pm

ACT's 2008 Season | A Little History...

The Aberdeen Community Theatre, ACT is a not-for-profit community theatre serving the greater Aberdeen (SD) area and is a member of the Aberdeen Area Arts Council, the South Dakotans For The Arts, the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce, the American Association of Community Theatre and the South Dakota Theatre Association. They perform at the historic downtown Capitol Theatre at 415 S. Main Street.

A little history...
The Aberdeen Community Theatre, then known as ACT2-- ACCT: the Aberdeen College-Community Theatre --was organized in October 1979 by Professor Richard Norquist (1933-2003), the Director of Theatre at Northern State College (now Northern State University) and Don Hall (1926-2008), the editor of the Where & When, an entertainment weekly.

Two shows, Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun and Philip King's British farce: See How They Run were presented on the MainStage of the Johnson Fine Arts Center during ACT's first "season" in the summer of 1980. This first "season" was extended when ACT produced Neil Simon's Barefoot In The Park in November at the Lumber Company, a popular entertainment facility in Aberdeen. This show was followed by a joint NSU/ACT staging of Dicken's Christmas Carol (at Northern) and Robert Anderson's You Know I Can't Hear You When The Water's Running at the Lumber Company. The original two show summer "season" had evolved into five shows presented in two different spaces. Each show during this first year had a different director.

In the fall of 1983, after mounting thirteen individual productions, ACT announced their first three show season -- Godspell, The Man of La Mancha and A. R. Gurney 's The Dining Room. All three productions were directed by James L. Walker who, in 1985, was appointed ACT's Artistic and Managing Director. The position he holds today.

For the first eleven years, ACT did not have a home. Most of their productions were presented at the University's Johnson Center, but during the "school year" when that facility was in use, shows were mounted at the Aberdeen Convention Center, the Elks Lodge, the Lumber Company, and the Aberdeen Area Recreation and Cultural Center.

Interior of the Capitol Theatre - 1927

In the fall of 1991, the Capitol Theatre, Aberdeen's last remaining downtown movie house, was donated to ACT. The facility, which opened on January 12, 1927 with a touring production of Michael Arlen's The Green Hat was without seats, dressing rooms, or shop space. The stage had a 27' proscenium opening and a depth of only 13'. The grid height was 41' but only two line sets remained. The lighting system, which was installed when the theatre opened in 1927, was now useless. All of the stage lights (borders and foots) had been removed and only three circuits of house lights still worked.

In 1992, a $500,000 fund raising drive, the "Capitol" Campaign, was initiated to prepare the theatre for production. In the spring of 1993, while funds were still being raised, ACT built a 32'x16' extension onto the stage (which more than doubled the stage depth), borrowed chairs from the Newman Center and the Ramada and Ramkota Inns, lighting equipment from Northern and Central High and mounted their first season of shows, Greater Tuna, Nunsence and Charley's Aunt, in their new home.

Capitol Theatre - 2006

In 1994, while the theatre was being remodeled, the seasons three productions were once again staged at NSU's Johnson Center. The 1995 season, which included Lost in Yonkers, Into The Woods and Arsenic and Old Lace was ACT's first full season in the newly renovated Capitol Theatre.

The 1,734 - 11 watt lamps in the Capitol Theatre's sixty foot tall marquee, which had been dark since the fire department declared it a "fire hazard" in 1994, were relighted on May 21, 1998. Three chapters of Questers-- Land of Oz, Yellow Brick Road, and Emerald City --an international organization founded to encourage the study of antiques and foster the preservation and restoration of historical landmarks, raised the more than $ 130,000 needed for the marquee's renovation.

January 2002 saw the completion of new handicap accessable restroom for the audience and new dressing rooms and a scene shop backstage. A "state of the art" 139 channel lighting system was installed the following year. In February 2004 a "state of the art" sound system and, again with the assistance of the Questers, six French art-deco chandeliers were installed in the auditorium. During the summer of 2007, a 20'x28' movie screen, 35mm film projector and four channel Dolby stereo sound system was installed in the theatre. The first film to be screened in the new Capitol Cinema was Sean Penn's Into the Wild which was shown at the opening of the South Dakota Film Festival on September 21, 2007.

Honk - 2007

ACT has won first place in the South Dakota Community Theatre One Act Play Festival five times. First in 1981 with "I'm Herbert" from You Know I Can't Hear You When The Water's Running, in 1991 with "Laughing Wild," in 2001 with The Compleat Wrks Of Wilm Shkspr (Abridged), in 2003 with "The Diary of Adam and Eve" from The Apple Tree, and in 2007 with Honk, which also won the Region V Festival in Liberty, Missouri and placed third at the national ACCT Festival in Charlotte, NC. This 2007 production of Honk! will perform in the World Festival of Children Performing Arts in Toyama, Japan on August 3, 2008. All of the productions were directed by ACT's Artistic Director: James L. Walker.

Productions from past seasons...