The Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut, where Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre staged the ill-fated Too Much Johnson in 1938, has been reborn as the Legacy Theatre.
On Saturday, November 14, at 7 p.m., the line-up for its inaugural Mainstage season will be announced during the virtual A Day at the Theatre!, co-hosted by Keely Baisden Knudsen, co-founder and artistic director, and Stephanie Stiefel Williams, co-founder and president of its board of trustees. In addition, there will beperformances by Broadway artists Debbie Gravitte, Arbender J. Robinson, Eric Santagata, Coco Smith, Vishal Vaidya and James Roday Rodriguez of USA Network’s Psych and two time Tony Award Winner Sutton Foster (Younger and Bunheads).
Tickets, starting at $35, for A Day at the Theatre! are on sale now at LegacyTheatre.givesmart.com.
During the gala, viewers will be told of how Welles debuted Too Much Johnson there. His youngest daughter, Beatrice Welles, is scheduled to take part in the gala.
In 1938, technical problems forced Welles to abandon a planned silent film introduction and transitions with Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis and other members of the Mercury. It has been widely reported that the negative response from theater-goers and critics prompted Welles not to open the William Gillette comedy in New York that fall.
Once a chapel-turned-movie house near the Thimble Islands, the Stony Creek Theatre was a home for community theater and summer stock productions during the Great Depression. It served as a parachute factory during World War II and in the early 1960s became known as the Stony Creek Puppet House.
The town of Branford condemned the property in January 2007 for building and fire code violations and its future looked bleak.
The Stony Creek Puppet House was acquired for $475,000 by Legacy Theatre, which has labored in recent years to raise funds to save the historic theater.
Legacy’s groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 6, 2019 and construction has been progressing rapidly with the building being 80% finished and on target to be completed in January.
For more information visit LegacyTheatreCT.org and follow @LegacyTheatreCT on social media.
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