If you looked at me, you’d never guess I like to go spend my free time watching stage plays, yet here we are. I was just bored one night, I saw an ad on Facebook for a play, rallied the wife, and an hour later we sat down in a moldy old gymnasium and watched a fabulous play by the St. Augustine community troupe known as A Classic Theatre.

It’s been a few years now, and I don’t think I’ve missed a single show.

I don’t even mean that I’ve just seen each production, I’ve seen each show of each production.

There’s typically 6 shows for each play. They do 2 sets of Fri-Sat-Sun shows every few months. They have a ‘season’, where they take the summers off, and all the plays run from late fall to early spring.

The venues have changed, and I assume they will continue to. The first show I saw was in the Lincolnville History Museum, I’ve seen more shows there since, but now the building is being remodeled, and the future of performances there is uncertain to me, as an outsider. The majority of shows I’ve seen have taken place at the St. Augustine Waterworks building, another post in and of itself. It’s a gorgeous, albeit small, building right in the center of St. Augustine. A Classic Theatre also do smaller shows with no props or stage sets, called Staged Readings, and they have had these in many places, including the Center for Spiritual Living St. Augustine.

The plays tend to be thought-provoking. They have some fun, known plays like It’s a Wonderful Life, but you also get biting social commentary in a play like Good People or The Immigrant. It’s always interesting to listen to the other audience members during intermission, get their takes on the play. It’s almost always a positive reaction, even when it is a trying message in the play. A Classic Theatre have proven time and time again with their subject matter that they will push the boundaries, and that’s always a good thing.

With St. Augustine being a fairly small town in the grand scheme of things, you get used to seeing many of the same actors. This isn’t Hollywood; the roles are limited, and the actors take chances. They do drama, comedy, musicals, and everything in-between. There’s one actor who I know works as a Lawyer during the day, but he also does plays, sings, and performs as a musician. Even the audio and video technicians have been recruited to act on occasion.

All of this adds up to fun times. The only drawback is that there’s only a limited few shows per year, and only so many tickets for each show. With this article appearing on a website for tourism, the readers will really need luck to make it to one of the shows. Their vacation would have to co-incide with one of the shows, and there would need to still be tickets available. All I can say to you is ‘good luck’.

Go see A Classic Theatre.

See the Schedule

Get Tickets

Stage Plays:
The Waterworks
184 San Marco Avenue
St. Augustine, FL, 32084

Staged Readings:
Center for Spiritual Living
1795 Old Moultrie Rd.
St. Augustine, FL, 32080