Season overview

• Celebration | Community Players celebrated 25 years of dedicated service, creativity, and commitment of Managing Artistic Director Jamie Ulmer by hosting a star-studded concert featuring favorite songs from his tenure at CP, performed by some of our best and brightest. Ulmer is the longest-serving Managing Director in our organization’s history.

• New Management | Associate Artistic Director Tyler J. Rinne, who has been with the organization since 2011, was promoted to fill the vacancy left as Ulmer accepted a job at Theatre Lawrence. Rinne served as Managing Director for the final five months of the season. A search for a new Associate Director is currently underway; this new hire will be only the second individual to fill this position at CP.

• Involvement | Onstage involvement at Community Players was off the charts this season, with 76 actors appearing in our Regular Season alone—the highest number in at least 18 years. Of those performers, 36 of them were brand-new to our stage, a number unmatched without going back to 2007. This doesn’t even count the 56 youth actors featured in our Stage Door programming!

• Attendance | While overall attendance still continues its rebound from the 2020-2022 period, this season saw the highest Regular Season attendance in nine years, largely boosted by our highly-attended musicals A Christmas Story: The Musical and The Music Man.

• Upgrades | Ongoing improvements to our current facility are underway, with the most recent and notable being the installation of brand-new risers in the auditorium, which also resulted in the first reorientation of the space since the 2008-2009 season. Planned improvements to the green room and backstage offices are currently being implemented. 
  

LOOKING AHEAD

As we continue to approach our 50th season, Community Players will continue to bring the best in entertainment to our community; to engage and enrich the lives of volunteers, performers, and audiences; and find new ways to innovate in the realms of diversity, inclusivity, and involvement, among others. Our theatre can be proud of what it brings to our community, while still striving to open its arms wider, grow its artistry further, and forge even more partnerships with our greatest current collaborators and our most promising new ones.