Encore Stage & Studio, the youth theater company that has shaped generations of young Arlington performers, is packing up its scattered offices for a single new home. The nonprofit announced plans to move its administrative and rehearsal operations into a 4,000-square-foot space co-located with First Presbyterian Church of Arlington near Ballston, with the move expected once renovations wrap up next year.
The announcement, first reported by ARLnow, lays out a facility built specifically around the needs of a youth theater program: administrative offices, a dedicated rehearsal room, a dance classroom and a box office. The rehearsal room itself is designed to double as a small theater, suited for student performances and design classes, according to the same report. The space will also host theater classes and mini-camps, and will serve as rehearsal space for Encore's larger productions.
Those larger shows aren't moving, though. Encore's bigger productions will continue to be staged at Thomas Jefferson and Gunston arts centers, the report notes, meaning the new Ballston-area space supplements rather than replaces the company's existing performance venues. Encore currently lists Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre as its production home, according to encorestage.org.
Why Ballston Made Sense
Encore Stage & Studio's executive director, Sara Duke, told supporters in an email that the Ballston property offers a set of practical advantages that have been hard to come by for an organization that has held office and classroom space in several locations over the years. The site sits in the heart of Arlington, on transit, with ample parking and space for safe student pickup and drop-off, the ARLnow report states. It's also a little more than a mile from Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre, keeping the new administrative hub within easy reach of the venue where many of Encore's shows go up.
For a company juggling classes, camps, rehearsals and outreach programming across multiple sites, that kind of consolidation is no small thing. The organization maintains a growing roster of outreach programming and puts on multiple productions throughout the year, per the same report, all of which has historically meant coordinating across whatever office and classroom space the company could piece together.
Roots Stretching Back to the 1960s
Encore's history traces to the mid-1960s, when it operated as the Children's Theatre of Arlington, a program of the county government's recreation department. Encore's own website states the organization was founded in 1967 as the Children's Theatre of Arlington. ARLnow's coverage of the company's approaching 60th anniversary, however, reports that the group's predecessor actually staged its first production, A Pocketful of Preposterous Poems, in July 1966 at Lubber Run Amphitheatre, and describes that show as the organization's founding production.
At some point in the 1970s, the theater spun off from county government and became a volunteer-run nonprofit, later adding professional staff as it grew. That professionalization accelerated in 2010, when the organization began transitioning from an all-volunteer operation to hiring a professional staff, according to ARLnow's anniversary feature. The company has since expanded its reach beyond Arlington to include programming in Alexandria.
A Program Built Around Young Performers
Encore today runs year-round theater camps, classes and productions for ages 3 through college, per its website, which also lists holiday mini-camps among its offerings. Each season, nearly 400 students participate as cast and crew members in Encore's productions, which draw about 10,000 audience members, according to ARLnow's April feature on the company.
The idea of pairing a local theater group with a church campus isn't new in Arlington. Back in 1971, the Children's Theatre of Arlington joined the Arlington Players and Arlington Symphony in proposing a performing-arts center and administrative offices at Cherrydale Baptist Church, an effort that ultimately fell through, ARLnow's history of the company notes. More than half a century later, Encore is set to find that kind of arrangement at a different Arlington church, with construction aimed at a 2027 move-in.
