Live theatre is experiencing a surge of growth in the region and its impact shows in the community.
Port Huron Civic Theatre and Enter Stage Right sit adjacent to one another just north of downtown Port Huron. The Snug Theatre and the Riverbank are located in Marine City and just down the river is the Boardwalk Theatre in the heart of St. Clair. Catch a show at
Richmond Community Theatre or head to Lexington to visit The Barn.
In addition to regular performances, camps, festivals, workshops, and cultural events are constantly occurring at these institutions.
The Beginning of Theatre in the Blue Water Area
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Ladies involved in the Port Huron Civic Theater's "Bushel and A Peck" number from the musical Guys and Dolls in 1966.
The area's roots in theatre go back over seventy-five years, starting with the Port Huron Civic Theatre.
Founded in 1956 as the Port Huron Little Theatre and funded by the St. Clair Community College’s program for continuing education, the theatre performed popular musicals and stage plays of the era. Shows were regularly produced with a budget of up to $3,000 in the early 1960s. Tickets went for as little as 75 cents and were available at local businesses.
The 1961 season featured a sold-out production of Guys and Dolls, and over 1,000 season tickets were purchased. Shows were reviewed in the Port Huron Times, which kept up to date on local performers.
Today, the Port Huron Civic Theatre at McMorran Place sits adjacent to the St. Clair Community College Fine Arts Building and two blocks from the Enter Stage Right (ESR) theatre, making up the official
Port Huron Theatre District declared in 2022.
The Civic continues to perform popular musicals, stage plays as well as junior productions that are massive community events providing cultural enrichment and exposing the next generation to art and culture. For the last two years, they’ve hosted a black tie gala celebration to support the theatre and continue to expand their programming.
Thumbcoast Theaters
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The Boardwalk Theater is located in the heart of downtown St. Clair where theater goers often stay for shopping and dining before and after shows.
The impact of theatre in St. Clair County today begins with the Boardwalk Theatre and its founder Kathy Vertin. The brand-new $4 million facility sits on the shores of the St. Clair River in downtown St. Clair. Built through the efforts of the theatre’s board, donors, and supporters, the facility is home to a full season of professionally produced shows and a year-round performing arts academy.
The Boardwalk is one of three theaters founded by Kathy Vertin and her husband known as the Thumbcoast Theaters. Decades ago, at the start of their retirement, they discovered the Blue Water Area, and at the same time, she found herself wanting to return to the stage. With her connection to the arts, a career in finance, and a background in tourism and economic development, she began to envision how they might bring professional live theater to the area.
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Kathy Vertin, Co-Founder of Thumbcoast Theatres.
“This waterfront area is so unknown, less than an hour from Metro Detroit,” Vertin says. “So I thought, I want people to know about this wonderful thumb coast, we’re gonna do this. We found this little storefront and opened a 98-seat theatre, and they came, it was just amazing to see.”
From there the Vertins opened the Riverbank Theatre, a 180-seat venue in the historic Marine Savings Bank Building, an ornate theatre complete with bank vaults and 1900s architecture. This allowed them to put up a show in one theatre while rehearsing for the next, which meant they were always selling tickets and growing. Soon they set their sights on a new theatre for the area, undertaking an economic study that shows how theatre brings tourism and wealth.
Now the Boardwalk Theatre is a modern 370-seat venue and a growing arts destination on the river bringing live theater and arts education to the community, and attracting new residents to the area.
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Inside the Boardwalk Theatre.
“The mission wasn’t to have the most profitable theatre.” Vertin explains, “It was to drive economic impact. We wanted economic development. We wanted more restaurants and stores to open. Last year we had 25,000 ticket sales. So those people coming in, do they go out for dinner, do they go out after, do they go shopping, do they come back next week?”
Enter Stage Right
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McKenna Golat and Aiden Burke perform in Arcadia by Tom Stoppard at Enter Stage Right this past April.
Founded in 2007 by Regina Spain, first as a non-profit youth theatre, ESR transitioned to a full-fledged theatre to produce professional quality community-based theatre. They were first known for their Will on the Water Shakespeare festival and continue to bring a wide range of classical and contemporary theatre to the area. Board Chair Brian Spain says “The mission of Enter Stage right is to bring powerful theatre to entertain, enlighten, and inspire our community.”
Spain adds, “Engagements with our local community range from aiding elementary and middle school theatre programs, working with the NAACP on their events, to working with The Community Enterprise Players to run theatre performances for and including members of the disabled Community.”
Like the Boardwalk Theatre, ESR draws audiences from the local communities and the metro Detroit area and even recently had theatergoers from Chicago and Toronto.
“Our production calendar offers valuable experiences to both our artists and our audiences,” Spain says. “For our artists, we’ve created a brave space where safe expression of ideas and feelings promote mental health in an artistic environment. Our audiences get the benefit of experiencing titles they know and love, as well as productions not as familiar, but that expand their theatre horizons.”
ESR recently announced that they are 2025 grant award recipients for the Michigan Art & Culture Council and National Endowment for the Arts, allowing them to cover expenses and expand programming.
Their newest program, the New Leaders Council allows for a group of eight artists selected from the next generation to get their feet wet in every aspect of producing a show under the mentorship of the theatre.
Bringing Community Together Through Theatre
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Kathy Vertin pictured center with the cast of Hello Dolly. The Boardwalk Theater Celebrated their grand opening with a revival of the classic musical which was the first show performed by the Thumbcoast Theaters at the Snug theater over 25 years ago.
Vertin hopes this will continue to be a space where the region’s talent has a platform to shine. “There’s talent in Michigan, and it’s a hidden talent, it’s the bank teller who plays the trombone better than you ever could have dreamed, a local Mom with a degree in classical music, so she’s an opera singer and she was working at GE. People have made their living and raised their families in Detroit, or metro Detroit, and they have talent, and they don’t get to use it unless we have this kind of avenue.”
Local Radio Morning Show Host
Paul Miller has interviewed dozens of community members in theatre and occasionally takes the stage himself.
"I am impressed with not only the quantity of live theatre in our area, but the quality,” Miller says. “There is such a variety of entertainment, and it creates wonderful opportunities for performers of all ages and backgrounds.”
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Paul Miller host of WBHM Morning show performs with Kaylee Loxton in Anne of the 1000 Days in March of 2022 at Enter Stage Right.
As artistic opportunities expand in the region many are discovering it for the first time and others are returning to give back like Samantha Jax, drama director at Port Huron High School who grew up in the area and returned with a degree in Theatre from Western Michigan University.
“It’s been such a joy to be working with the next generation of actors and technicians with many different talents and jobs, but a shared drive for a production from beginning to end,” Jax says. “Theatre is a second home for many young people and I'm glad to continue cultivating a safe space for creativity and expression.”
The shores of St. Clair County, perhaps an unexpected place with its vast farmlands and industrial towns, are fastly becoming a destination and a home for these kinds of spaces, and its communities are stronger for it every day.
“In an age that we’re so divided – political divides, religious conflict, there’s just so much out there to be fighting about, and yet all different people of all persuasions, with their little batch of problems and biases and issues come into the theater and we laugh together and we cry together and for that brief moment in time, we’re one,” Vertin says. “There’s a sense of unity in this, it takes you out of the world and brings you into this world that we created.”