Sacramento Music Circus

The Sacramento Music Circus is one of a rare breed -
a regional summer stock company still in business since beginning with a 10-show season in 1951.
Over the years they continued to offer the "classics" of musical theater (Brigadoon, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat along with newer works.

- entrance -

This would be my first experience of live musical theatre
when my older brother brought me in 1961 to see Showboat.
(Earlier that year he had taken me to a college production of Romeo and Juliet.
I was a goner. Theatre would be my passion for life.)

- old tent front -

Other "music circus" theatres began closing throughout the 1970s and 80s until 2002 only two theatres
of the original design (Sacramento Music Circus and one East Coast site working only as a concert site) remained.

- old tent entrance -

In 2002 Sacramento Music Circus erected a new permanent building, still in the old "theatre-in-the-round"
style and with a fabric-covered top to give the illusion of the old tent.

- stage -

So the hot, stuffy old tent with its noisy swamp coolers has been replaced by a lovely permanent theatre.
The crowds of locals and people who have driven sometimes two hours each way (as I used to)
have much more comfortable seats, and the shows are still of the best quality.

Here's to the Sacramento Music Circus. May it last forever.

Programs available from this theatre:

Call Me Madam / 1986

Annie Get Your Gun / 1990

Into the Woods / 1990

Hello Dolly / 1992

Sweet Charity / 1991

Oklahoma! / 1992