Footlight Club
Nestled in a residential area near Jamaica Pond, The Footlight Club, America's oldest community theatre, has performed every year since 1877. For over a century Footlight Club members have sustained the organization's mission: To present the best in non-professional theater to a broad-based audience, and to preserve and maintain Eliot Hall as a community resource. Increased membership and audience sizes are evidence that The Footlight Club is once again taking its place among the sisterhood of community theatres. Founded by an energetic group of young socialites, The Footlight Club has evolved along with its neighborhood. Once, wealthy aristocrats arrived in coaches to enjoy the society of their own kind in an atmosphere of gentility and wealth. The performances sometimes seemed secondary to the social function. Today the Footlight Club draws its membership from Jamaica Plain, other Boston neighborhoods and surrounding communities. Members and guests range in age from teens to senior citizens and come from every social and economic stratum. Doctors and lawyers, waiters and cooks, husbands and wives, come together to perform, to enjoy, and to support exciting amateur productions and the other activities that make up live theater.
