(audience claps) - The importance of Little Theater to Wilkes-Barre and the area would be best known by asking the people who come to see the shows and the people who are in the shows.

It's one of those institutions that has a dual mission.

It's a place of friends and neighbors, of people who know one another.

And here we are, as a group, knowing each other pretty well.

You know, most of the people who do theater to create it know each other, know, they've heard of each other.

Santo Loquasto who graduated from Kings and has, I think, four Tonys to his credit on Broadway and, you know, two, three dozen nominations for film and theater, said, "Your area is theatrically vibrant."

And I thought, boy, that could not be said better.

It is.

There is probably more theater per capita here in northeast Pennsylvania, where you would not expect it necessarily.

You know, it's not an area known for the arts.

The question is, how did Little Theater get this far and what happens for the next hundred years?

And really, with any theater, all you can say is by the grace of God.

A theater organization is like an old building.

If you don't give it maintenance, it's gonna start to lean and one day, you get a heavy snow and it topples over.

When I look back on the history of this place, of this institution, there are so many ways it could've gone wrong, or could've failed, or just come to a stop because of various challenges.

But the people over the decades, whose names and photos we have in our archives, some of them very old, you know, going back to the 1920s, would not let it.

They continued to say, "We have to make it bigger and better, "maintain it and keep it going."

So it was sheer force of personal will by people who love what happens in a building like this.

And you can feel it.

- Little Theater of Wilkes-Barre is a special place.

And if you don't know about us, come ask.

You know, our doors are mostly always open.

And, you know, whenever we're having a show or we're rehearsing, please come in and talk to us.

If you want to get involved in one of our productions, talk to, email me directly.

I'm on Facebook, you can't, you know, I have a very, very odd name.

You can find me.

And if you haven't heard about us as an audience member, you've experienced nothing like it in northeast Pennsylvania.

It truly is Broadway in your backyard.

(gentle piano music) - My duties are anything that no one else does, which is a heck of a job description.

In the bylaws, we're an all-volunteer organization.

We have a board of 15 people that people run for and are elected to the volunteer board.

And of course, the chair is that and helps to make decisions.

But everything we do is done collaboratively.

So I try to do a lot of organizing and help us all work together and hopefully do a good job of that.

- I oversee, I guess, the artistic merit of all the shows that we do here at Little Theater.

I guess my biggest duty is I license and I chair the committee for all the shows that we do.

The season selection committee, we call it.

We have members of our board, as well as members of the community come together and decide collectively what would be the best fit for that particular season at Little Theater.

And then, once we choose the shows, we put them up to the board for a vote, and then once the board votes on them, I go license said shows and I work with licensing agencies, making sure that all, everything is correct there, legality-wise.

And then, I make sure that all the directors are picked and all the shows are staffed, and making sure that the artistic merit on that stage is the best quality that we can provide.

During COVID, we had to shut our doors for a while, but thankfully, not for very long.

We were able to do some wonderful productions online and that way, we were able to keep our audiences engaged.

We were able to livestream our gala, we were able to livestream many events from our theater.

And once we were able to open again, once it was safe to do so, we were still doing so with masks and, you know, masks in the audience, and we found that the audiences were ready.

They were ready to come out again and it was we, our audiences after COVID were larger than the ones right before it.

And it was wonderful to see.

- A few years ago, we started to do a Christmas show, which we had not done and I was able to direct "A Christmas Carol," which has gone several times since then.

Scott has directed it.

And to see grandmothers and grandfathers bringing little girls in with their Christmas dress and little kids with the, you know, the bow tie and the itchy sweater, and we're doing something special this year.

Are we going to a movie?

No, it's not a movie, it's an actual play where the people are right there.

And these are kids who've, you know, never been to the theater before and maybe never would be.

They're not gonna go to Broadway, but here they are, thinking, wow, this place is kinda special.

I love that.

I love to be able to give that gift to the community and to receive the gift of their applause and appreciation.

It's fantastic.

(audience claps) (playful holiday music)