The History of The Empty Space
The Empty Space opened its doors on January 2, 2003, and incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit the following year. Our theatre’s name is derived from the 1968 book written by Peter Brook, "The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate", and specifically the first few lines of the book: "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged."
Our earliest vision for The Empty Space helped coin our tag line "Setting Theatre Free." We believe that people shouldn't have an excuse not to see live theatre, so patrons were admitted freely into the theatre and encouraged to donate after the show, if they saw fit. From there, the idea of setting theatre free evolved into setting theatre free from not only monetary affordability, but free from judgement, free from commercial expectations, free from traditional and expected views on what theatre should be.
Today, we stand by our commitment to make sure theatre is affordable to anyone who wants to see it. Our admission prices remain low, even after 20 years, and we personally reserve at least ten seats for every performance for pay-what-you-can patrons. The generosity of our patrons has allowed us to keep this number of free admissions, while still ensuring our production values remain high.
Since its founding, The Empty Space has mounted more than 300 productions and has had over 200 volunteer board members, actors, and technicians, and more than 50,000 patrons.
Thank you for visiting us at The Empty Space.
PAST SEASONS
2023 Season
Shakespeare’s Fools & Clowns
Stay With Me Awhile
3 Days in Space
Head Over Heels
Spring Awakening
Puffs
The Lightning Thief
2022 Season
The Light in the Piazza
Puffs
Serial Stories IV
3 Days in Space
Titus Andronicus
Dogfight
The Play That Goes Wrong
Temperance in Reverse
Heathers
Lost Girl
Horse Girls
The SpongeBob Musical
2021 Season
The Zoom Where It Happened
Drive-In Live!
Bard in Your Yard
Drive-In Live 2!
3 Days in Space
The Full Monty
Girls Kill Nazis
Big Fish
2020 Season
The Outsiders
Serial Stories III
Chavez Ravine
When We Were Young and Unafraid
Haunted Bakersfield
Wanderbuhne
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
2019 Season
Venus in Fur
The Last Five Years
Serial Stories I
Reefer Madness
Death Comes to Us All, Mary Agnes
As You Like It
Magic, Drunk, Love
The Wedding Singer
She Kills Monsters
Project: Rerun
Significant Other
The Subject Is...
Veronica's Room
Premeditated
American Idiot
Serial Stories II
It's a Wonderful Life
2018 Season
Project: Play in a Day 4
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches & Perestroika
Three Sisters
Icarus’s Mother
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Caligari
Assassins
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Project: Pride
‘Art'
Vampire Lesbians of Sodam
Dancing at Lughnasa
Marie and Bruce
My Fair Lady
It's Lit: An Evening of One-Act Plays
Bus Stop
Project: Phobia
She Loves Me
2017 Season
Project: Play in A Day 3
Arsenic and Old Lace
The Zoo Story
An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein
See Rock City & Other Destinations
Romeo and Juliet
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
The Bald Soprano and The Leader
Urinetown
If/Then
Of Mice and Men
Matt and Ben
The Woman in Black
The Book of Liz
Suicide, Inc.
Young Frankenstein
Little Women
2016 Season
Project: Play in a Day 2
Cabaret
The Glass Menagerie
Miss Nelson is Missing!
Othello
Project: Fifth Dimension
The Clean House
You Can’t Take it With You
In the Heights
The Role Remix
Till Death
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
Seminar
Rock of Ages
Hurry Up, Santa! - The Musical
2015 Season
Project: Play in a Day 1
Proof
A Company of Wayward Saints
Twelfth Night
Little Shop of Horrors
Wait Until Dark
#HowOriginal
The Role III
Dispatch Will
The Meeting
Narrations of the Heart
August: Osage County
The Quality of Life
Sex AKA Weiners and Boobs
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Bang Bang You’re Dead
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
Sugar Plum Follies
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
2014 Season
The Book of Andy
Next to Normal
Picnic
love.
The Vagina Monologues
Wonder of the World
Into the Woods
The Women
Project: Fairytale
The Role II
In the Next Room
Random: A Night of One-Act Plays
My First Time
Project: Hero
The Haunting of Hill House
The Durang Zone
Hair
A Very Empty Christmas
2013 Season
Spring Awakening
Wit
Crimes of the Heart
Dog Sees God
The Nerd
Sweet Charity
The Role I Was(n’t) Born to Play
Charm
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Cannibal! The Musical
Our Town
Late Night with Christopher Durang
The 12 Plays of Christmas
2012 Season
Boy Gets Girl
Celeb Biography
The Vagina Monologues
Herstory
The Miracle Worker
Marat/Sade
[title of show]
The Tempest
Wonderful Time
Reckless
Avenue Q
Dustin Lance Black's 8
Late Night with Michael Mejia: Postcards from Singapore
Death and the Maiden
God of Carnage
The Bullied
Almost, Maine
Stripped
Gorey Stories
The Unexpected Man
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
Hurry Up, Santa! + The Jack Frost Show
2011 Season
Touch
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Project LOVE
The Vagina Monologues
The Shadow Box
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty
Stage Door
Late Night with David Ives
American Snapshot
Late Night w Michael Mejia
The Wild Party
Beirut
Hay Fever
Lonely Planet
Faust
The Complete Works of Wm. Shakespeare (Abridged)
Geeks Vs. Zombies
Next Fall
A Christmas Carol
2010 Season
Thrill Me
First Kisses
A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer
The Vagina Monologues
The Diary of Anne Frank
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Jukebox Legends
Melon Colony
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The Killing Ghost
As You Like It
Geeks vs. Zombies
Mr. Marmalade
Hamletmachine
Dear Harvey
The Blue Room
Late Night With Christopher Durang
Hurry Up, Santa! & The Jack Frost Show
2009 Season
The Good Life
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
VDAY
SuperVillain!
The Winter’s Tale
Becoming Flux
Fool for Love
Pinter Plays
Chatsworth
The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told
How I Learned to Drive
Project: Sin
Beyond Therapy
Hurry Up, Santa!
2008 Season
Imaginary Friends
Drop Dead!
Eleemosynary
V-DAY
A Piece of My Heart
The Bourgeois Gentleman
Duck Hunter Shoots Angel
Reefer Madness: The Musical
Godmakers
A Very Factual History of Entertainment
Medea
Babies Having Babies
bare
Rabbit Hole
The Laramie Project
Project: Turkey Day
A Christmas Carol
2007 Season
Sea Marks
Big Knuckles
Lettice and Lovage
Four
The Vagina Monologues
True Tales 3
Macbeth
Playpourri
Bent
Corpus Christi
Puppet Slam
Hair
Burn This
The White Whore and the Bit Player
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Onionheads
Project: Ghost
The Importance of Being Earnest
Monkey Planet
Hurry Up, Santa! & The Jack Frost Show
2006 Season
Italian American Reconciliation
The Vagina Monologues
Pterodactyls
Side Show
Cleansed
The Nina Variations
The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia
Die, Mommy, Die!
Rowing to America
The Philadelphia Story
Fuddy Mears
Becoming Flux
Project: Murder!
Jessie’s Place
Control Freaks
Hurry Up, Santa!
2005 Season
Animal Farm
The Vagina Monologues
Men Without Dates/Slam!
Sex AKA Weiners & Boobs
The Merchant of Venice
Stone Cold Dead Serious
Angels in America: Perestroika
Luanne Hampton Laverty Oberlander
An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein
Closer
Ancient History
PlayJam
He Done Dissed Her or Oh No He Di’nt
Anna in the Tropics
The Bad Seed
True Tales 2
Beyond the Horizon
LQVE & H8TE
PlayJam 2
Hurry Up, Santa!
La Pastorela
2004 Season
Of Mice and Men
Suburbia
Shakespeare-A-Thon
VDAY
Oleanna
Steve Martin One-Acts: WASP/The Zig-Zag Woman
Much Ado about Nothing
Julius Caesar
Women and Wallace
Stop/Kiss
Baby with the Bathwater
Cabaret
The Odd Couple
True Tales
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
The Migrant Farmworker’s Son
The Altruists
Spider Baby
Our Town
Hurry Up, Santa!
2003 Season
Laughing Wild
‘Dentity Crisis
A Life in the Theatre
The Duck Variations
All Men Are Whores
Sexual Perversity in Chicago
The Taming of the Shrew
Cowboy Mouth
Hamlet
Hot ‘n’ Throbbing
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Waiting for Godot
Cloud 9
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Hurry Up, Santa!