The Company
Our Mission
The mission of 6th Street Playhouse is to create theatre and programs that engage, inspire, and educate our diverse Sonoma County community through professional quality productions and 6th Street Studio, our educational program.
Our History
In 2004, a new partnership reunited the Santa Rosa Players and Actors Theatre under one board of directors. Now merged under the name 6th Street Playhouse, together they renovated the 107-year-old Del Monte Cannery. It opened to sellout crowds in February 2005 with the production of Mame.
6th Street Playhouse has received the City of Santa Rosa Award for Cultural Enrichment and the Sonoma County Historical Society Award for Preservation of a Historical Building.
Our Vision
The vision of 6th Street Playhouse is to be the premiere North Bay destination for compelling theatre and creative excellence, engaging a community of dedicated artists, patrons, and educators.
The Former Companies
Santa Rosa Players (SRP) is Sonoma County’s oldest community theatre company. Twenty-three theatre-loving community members, who had been performing yearly in Memorial Hospital’s fund-raising event “The Hi-Fever Folllies”, were eager to bring live theatre to the community on a more regular basis. They formed the Santa Rosa Players, and were granted status as a non-profit corporation in 1972. The Santa Rosa Players performed in various arenas including the El Rancho Motel’s Tropicana Room, the Flamingo Hotel, and the Sonoma County Fairgrounds Arts and Crafts Building. In 1977, the Santa Rosa Players moved into the Lincoln Arts Center at Seventh and Davis Streets after converting the gymnasium/auditorium into Santa Rosa’s first theatre complex. They occupied and managed the 250-seat theatre in the Lincoln Arts Center until the Kid Street Learning Center took possession of the building in 2001. Santa Rosa Players then moved to the Merlo Theatre at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.
Actors Theatre (AT) was founded in 1984 by local actors, most of them members of the Santa Rosa Players wishing to produce edgy, contemporary dramas. Actors Theatre opened its first production, Nuts, in a storefront at the Brickyard Shopping Center in Santa Rosa. Encouraged by the astonishing critical and popular success of Nuts, the group incorporated as Actors Theatre of Sonoma County, a non-profit organization, in August, 1984. In 1996, Actors Theatre moved to the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.