Eventide Theater Company (ETC)
In the Dennis Union Church on the Gertrude Lawrence Stage
While Dennis Union Church members think of Fellowship Hall as home to after-church coffee hours, summer auction storage and preparations, and sundry other church activities, the room has also been the work-place for literally hundreds of Cape performing artists, lighting technicians, and stage craftsmen since 2002 when the Eventide Arts Festival (now the Eventide Theatre Company) began its nearly two decades of performances on the Gertrude Lawrence Stage.
Built in 1954, Fellowship Hall — with its stage dedicated to Dennis resident, Church member, and legendary Broadway star Gertrude Lawrence — has undergone upgrading of its stage and lighting equipment and performance space capabilities to meet the requirements of ETC’s modern theatrical productions.
In the last twenty plus years, ETC has brought to its audiences a multi-colored array of 63 play productions, 20-plus concerts by exceptional musicians and vocalists, nearly a dozen new plays by Cape playwrights (winners and runners-up in ETC’s annual Kaplan Playwriting Competition), and the annual Songwriting Competition – not to mention performers from 10 to 80 years of age and the work of writers, directors, musicians, designers, builders, painters, costumers/seamstresses, electricians, properties managers – all supported by house- managers, box office managers, ushers, refreshments- sellers – all working toward one objective: bringing the play and ideas through language and music to audiences as one cohesive whole of blended voices reaching out.
So many voices! Such power!
Ellis Baker – Director, Designer 2002-2016 Board of Directors, President 2016
