Past Productions & History
Virginia Rep was created by the merger of Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV in 2012. Virginia Rep is the largest professional theatre, and one of the largest performing arts organizations, in Central Virginia.
In 1953, six actors, two children, a dog and two pigs moved into a historic ruin called Hanover Tavern. The transplanted New Yorkers founded Central Virginia’s first professional theatre, and named the company in memory of a deceased college friend, Barbara Barksdale.
When they learned that their new neighbors looked forward to eating on evenings out, they combined favorite recipes and created the nation’s first dinner theatre. They lived upstairs, performed downstairs, and served hearty meals in the historic rooms that fell in between. Committed to the “decentralization of American theatre,” these six 20-somethings not only saved what has now become a national landmark, they also founded what is today the nation’s eighth longest operating professional regional theatre.
During the first six years, four of the original founders moved on, leaving Pete Kilgore, Muriel McAuley and newcomer (and newly-wed) Nancy Kilgore firmly in charge. In the seasons that followed, Pete, Muriel and Nancy produced Greater Richmond’s first professional productions of plays by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, Thornton Wilder, William Inge and Edward Albee.
They also became dynamic civic leaders. In defiance of Jim Crow laws, Barksdale was Virginia’s first performing arts organization to open its doors to integrated audiences. Barksdale conducted Virginia’s first professional theatre classes for children. In 1973, Barksdale produced Virginia’s first professional play based on African American experience, Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black.
In 1990, the Tavern was sold to the Hanover Tavern Foundation. In 1993, Pete, Muriel and Nancy retired after 40 years of exemplary service. John Glenn was named Artistic Director. In 1996, to accommodate a full restoration of its beloved home, Barksdale left the Tavern for new facilities at Willow Lawn. In 1997, John Glenn left to pursue other opportunities, and Randy Strawderman was hired to replace him.
Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV began sharing a single staff in 2001, but operated as two separate nonprofit theatres. Barksdale returned theatrical programming to Hanover Tavern in January 2006, renting the space from the Hanover Tavern Foundation to complement its five-play Signature Season at Willow Lawn.
In 2012 Barksdale merged with Theatre IV and became Virginia Repertory Theatre. Today, productions at the Tavern are ongoing as part of our Barksdale Season.
Theatre IV was founded in 1975 by Bruce Miller and Phil Whiteway as Virginia’s first professional theatre for young audiences. It focused on four areas: the arts, education, children’s health and safety, and community leadership.
Dedicated to children, families, and schools, for over 30 years, Theatre IV performed in every school district in Virginia and toured regularly to major performing arts centers throughout 32 states on the eastern half of the nation. The touring arm continues today as Virginia Rep on Tour.
One of the earliest productions of Theatre IV, a dramatization of African-American folk tales, was selected to represent the United States at the International Children’s Festival at Wolf Trap Farm Park, and recorded for international broadcast over Voice of America.
Over the years Theatre IV produced many educational plays to address social issues. In 1983, in partnership with the Virginia Department of Social Services and Families Forward, Theatre IV created and began touring Hugs and Kisses, Virginia’s principal child sexual abuse prevention program. Since that time, Hugs and Kisses has been presented to over 1.5 million children in every school district statewide. Over 15,000 Virginia children have come forward for more information or help after seeing a performance of Hugs and Kisses.
In 1985 Theatre IV produced Do Lord Remember Me based on the oral histories of former slaves interviewed during the Federal Writer’s Project, and received the Award of Excellence from Branches of the Arts for “The most outstanding play relating to African-American experience.”
In partnership with the National Network of Runaway and Youth Services and the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice, Theatre IV created and began touring Runners, a landmark delinquency prevention program, based on interviews with 42 runaways living in Virginia’s halfway houses and emergency shelters.
In 1986, Theatre IV purchased and renovated the historic November Theatre (formerly the Empire), one of Richmond’s two Broadway style houses. It was further restored in 2011 when Sara Belle and Neil November made a $2 million gift to Theatre IV and Barksdale. The November now serves as Virginia Rep’s headquarters and home and anchors the Arts District.
Bruce Miller and Phil Whiteway assumed the leadership of Barksdale Theatre in 2001 and operated both theatres, sharing administrative resources but operating as two separate nonprofit theatres.
In 2002 the Pentagon selected Theatre IV’s production of Buffalo Soldier, written and directed by Bruce Miller, as a morale booster after September 11th. Theatre IV became the first professional theatre in the nation to perform within the Pentagon walls. The performance received a standing ovation from the packed auditorium, and was broadcast live throughout the Pentagon.
Having opened its doors on Christmas Day, 1911, the November Theatre is the state’s oldest major stage house and a linchpin in Virginia history. It operates today as the vibrant home of Virginia Repertory Theatre, and as a living museum commemorating and exploring the roles this landmark building has played in the rich cultural life of Central Virginia.
Built by Moses Hofheimer with an interior design by famed Italian artist Ferruccio Legnaioli, the November was named the Empire Theatre for the first three years of its existence. The Empire opened in 1911 on the final day of the century of mourning that followed the horrific Richmond Theatre fire of Dec 26, 1811. Seventy-two Richmonders had died in that blaze, including Virginia’s sitting Governor, George W. Smith, and former U. S. Senator Abraham B. Venable. That tragic event had been considered the worst urban disaster in America in its time.
With a keen focus on fire safety, Hofheimer modeled his Richmond Empire on the world-renowned Empire Theatre in New York, which had opened in 1893, and is credited today with starting what we now know as Broadway. Located at 1430 Broadway between 40th and 41st Streets, NYC’s Empire was the first theatre in that city to have been built with all electric lighting. Also, due to advances in digging equipment, the Empire was the only NY theatre in its time to feature a stage situated below street level, allowing audiences to enter and exit the rear of the house at street level, without having to negotiate stairs. Due to these singular features, New York’s Empire was famous for being “thoroughly fireproof.” Richmond’s Empire was the first theatre in Central Virginia to replicate all these advances.
The Empire was also Richmond’s first “air conditioned” theatre, allowing it to be open during the summers. Small tunnels can still be found inches beneath each aisle. Large blocks of ice were placed under the stage at the mouths of these passageways, and powerful electric fans blew across this ice sending chilled breezes up through floor vents situated near the ends of each row.
From 1911 through 1914, our historic November Theatre was named the Empire. It was Richmond’s first integrated theatre post Reconstruction. Virginia’s earliest Jim Crow Laws banned black theatregoers from all entertainments patronized by whites. Moses Hofheimer, developer of the Empire, proposed converting his theatre’s gallery (the top balcony) from a seating area reserved for the “gallery gods” (young white ruffians who filled a similar balcony at Richmond’s Academy of Music) to a segregated seating area for black audiences. At Hofheimer’s urging, Virginia’s Jim Crow Laws were re-written to state, “Every person… operating… any public hall, theater, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored race.”
It seems regressive now, but Hofheimer’s efforts to seat black and white audiences under the same roof were progressive for their time. Forty-three years later, the founders of Barksdale Theatre would put the next nail in the coffin of Virginia’s Jim Crow theatre law. In 1954, Pete Kilgore and Muriel McAuley invited a group of professors and students from Virginia Union University to join their white audience at Hanover Tavern, sitting side by side. In open defiance of the law and risking arrest, they presented the first fully integrated performance in Virginia post Reconstruction.
When the Empire opened in 1911, it operated as a legitimate theatre, presenting live performances of great plays instead of vaudeville or silent movies. The renowned actress Lucille La Verne, a veteran of seven Broadway hits, assembled her own stock company at the Empire in 1913. She presented 80 performances in four months, selling 147,000 tickets! Edith Lindeman, Times-Dispatch theatre critic, wrote that the Empire “was a popular theater with audiences, especially on Wednesday matinees when each woman in attendance received a quarter-pound box of Huyler’s chocolates and a dainty linen handkerchief to wipe her eyes during the sad scenes.”
During its earliest days as a legitimate theatre (1911-1914), our historic November was known by its original name, the Empire. It was home to several national stars who worked in the Empire’s own stock company for several months out of every year, dividing their careers between Richmond, New York and the emerging film capital of Hollywood.
Prominent resident actors at the Empire included:
- Lucille La Verne – leading lady and manager of the stock company, best remembered for subsequently voicing the Wicked Queen and the crone with the poisoned apple in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ,
- Frank Morgan – the Empire’s juvenile lead who later achieved film immortality playing the title role in The Wizard of Oz,
- Edward Arnold – the Empire’s dashing leading man who went on to co-star as a character actor in Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It with You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in the late 30s, and then served as President of the Screen Actors Guild,
- Mary Miles Minter – the stock company’s ingénue who later rivaled Mary Pickford as the silent movie era’s leading starlet, earning one of the first stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and
- John Bunny – the 300-pound comic who was the most popular movie star in the world from 1910 until his death in 1915. He starred in over a hundred silent films, made “more money that the President,” and his cherubic face was insured for the unheard of sum of $100,000.
In December 1914 the Empire was refitted for the emerging art form of film, and renamed the Strand, copying the name of the lavish NYC movie palace built the year before at the corner of Broadway and 47th. The Strand served until 1927 as one of Richmond’s most prominent and popular homes for film and vaudeville.
In 1927, a fire damaged the space, and it lay dark until it was re-opened in 1933 as the Booker T Theatre, which featured films and vaudeville performances until 1974.
In 1977 Theatre IV (now known as Virginia Rep) rented the Empire Theatre, launching its first main stage (non-touring) season of major productions designed to serve elementary age children and their families.
1986 event shortly after Theatre IV’s purchase of the theatre. Photo by P. Kevin Morely for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Theatre IV purchased the theatre and its neighboring Walker Theatre (which later became the Little Theatre and finally, Theatre Gym) in 1986. Restorations were completed in 1990, and Theatre IV presented performances for children and families in the renovated space, which they renamed the Empire Theatre.
Twenty-one years later, with the Empire in need of new renovations, Sara Belle and Neil November made a $2 million gift for restoration, and in 2012 the Empire Theatre was renamed the Sara Belle and Neil November Theatre.
Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV merged in 2012 to become Virginia Rep, and we continue to present performances at this downtown, historic theatre.
In 2013, the stage at the November Theatre was renamed to the Marjorie Arenstein Stage to honor the legacy of prominent Richmond actress, Marjorie Arenstein.
In 2018 the grand tier balcony was completely refurbished.
Hanover Tavern is one of the oldest taverns in the United States. The first tavern was licensed at the site beginning in 1733. When the Tavern was purchased by the editor of the Virginia Gazette in 1743, it was part of the plantation grounds at the courthouse, and it went on to serve as lodgings to those with appointments before the court.
Patrick Henry’s father-in-law purchased the tavern in 1750, and Patrick Henry lived at the Tavern for several years. Other memorable visitors include George Washington, Lord Cornwallis, Chief Justice John Marshall, and Edgar Allen Poe. Several enslaved people from the Tavern took part in Gabriel’s Great Slave Rebellion of 1800.
In 1953, six actors from New York moved into what had become a historic ruin, and founded Central Virginia’s first professional theatre, Barksdale Theatre. During the first six years, four of the original founders moved on, leaving Pete Kilgore, Muriel McAuley and newcomer (and newly-wed) Nancy Kilgore in charge. They produced Greater Richmond’s first professional productions of plays by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, Thornton Wilder, William Inge and Edward Albee.
They also became dynamic civic leaders. In defiance of Jim Crow laws, Barksdale was Virginia’s first performing arts organization to open its doors to integrated audiences. Barksdale launched Greater Richmond’s first “studio season,” converting an old country store into an experimental theatre. Barksdale conducted Virginia’s first professional theatre classes for children.
In 1973, Barksdale produced Virginia’s first professional play based on African American experience, Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black.
In support of their theatrical mission, Pete, Muriel and Nancy continued the endless task of restoring the Tavern. Then in 1990, the Tavern was sold to the Hanover Tavern Foundation, who have restored the Tavern to its present state. Although Barksdale Theatre moved to Willow Lawn from 1996 to 2005, we returned theatrical programming to the Tavern in January 2006.
In 2012, Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV merged to become Virginia Repertory Theatre. We continue to perform at the Hanover Tavern.