OUR HISTORY

Margreta Stage Company, formerly the New Main Street Theater, was founded in the spring of 2006 by Jeanie Rapp of Deep River, CT with the premiere reading of celebrated author Lary Bloom's play, Worth Avenue, at the Chester Meeting House, featuring Scotty Bloch and Peter Walker.   This event was a natural progression of Rapp’s Read Thru series, held at River Tavern, which she cast with local professional talent and interested novices. Her vision was to create an experience that would allow artistic collaboration to be spontaneous, informal, and fun by combining it with the festivity of a social gathering. The Read Thrus You Can’t Take it With You and The Women were enthusiastically received and these artistically driven community gatherings planted the seeds of her emerging company.

Margreta continues to flourish from those community roots. Rapp’s Actor Parties have been an intrinsic part of this growth. “The Actor Party tradition began because we wanted to find a way for area actors, theater artists, and interested community members to socialize while participating in a creative event. They’re fun and they provide a place to party and network while exercising the craft of acting through readings of scenes and monologues,” Rapp says.  They have become that and much more. Gathering together to celebrate a shared love of the arts is the consistent thread that connects the company and has made it bloom.

The Actor Parties have been a springboard for the many faces of Margreta Stage that now exist, including the recent additions of Margreta Stage Studio, where workshops and acting classes take place, and New Plays:  A Margreta Stage Reading Series, which is dedicated to the development of new works for the stage.  The Actor Parties are signature to Margreta Stage – theater as an experience and a process. The company is a community that Rapp hopes will keep expanding – familiar faces and new ones are always welcome at MS’s Actor Parties.

Rapp fosters the idea that Margreta Stage is a fluid experience that comes directly from the passion and interest of its members. The selection of each event is guided by community brainstorming and decisions are made project by project, according to what is most relevant to the company’s heartbeat.

The history of Margreta Stage reflects this tradition. The following milestones were inspired by that spirit of collaboration and celebration:

• June 2007 - The Company’s  inaugural main stage production, Trying on Shorts, played to sold-out audiences at Deep River Town Hall, Deep River, CT.

• 2007-08 – Award winning playwright Arlene Hutton’s Nibroc Trilogy formed the centerpiece for the remaining main stage season with The Last Train to Nibroc (Nov.), See Rock City (Feb.) and Gulf View Drive (May) at the Chester Meeting House, Chester, CT.

• Fall 2008 – Margreta Stage received its official not-for-profit status and celebrated this achievement, as well as the inception of its new name, at a community gathering at EO Art Lab in Chester, CT.

• 2008-09 – The Company kicked off its second season with a play reading of The Man Who Came to Dinner, which delighted another sold-out audience at the Ivoryton Playhouse, Ivoryton, CT.

• January 2009 – Margreta Stage Studio was created and classes began at Margreta Stage headquarters for professionals and novices to study acting in a supportive yet challenging environment.

• January 2009 – New Plays: A Margreta Stage Reading Series, a  playreading series devoted to the development of new plays, was launched with a reading of The Farm, by Julius Landau, at the Deep River Historical Society’s Carriage House.  The series provides playwrights with a forum to share their plays and hear them read aloud by company members while the audience has the opportunity to observe the artistic process of risk and discovery.

• June 2009 – The second presentation in New Plays: A Margreta Stage  Reading Series showcased Robert Wynne’s  A Conflict of Fragrances at the Deep River Town Hall.

“Transformation is part of the art - and the metamorphosis of Margreta Stage mirrors its mission statement "to create a theatrical force of immediacy, boldness and discovery."