Rutherford’s Historic Little Theater at Felician College to Open

Rutherford, NJ—After months of renovations that had workers tearing down, painting over and pulling out tattered old relics from an era gone by, the Little Theater at Felician College is ready to show off its new face.  Under the direction of Artistic Director Keline Adams, the Little Theater will open in November with a “New Playwrights Festival” and rededication ceremony that honors the past and inaugurates a new era of small theater productions in Rutherford, NJ. 

Seating 95 people, The Little Theater at Felician will serve “as a bridge between the college and the community,” says Adams.  To encourage and support the work of new playwrights, The New Playwright’s Festival will feature the work of local artists whose plays were evaluated and selected from a pool of submissions by a panel of six professional artists from varied disciplines in January 2001.  During the month of November, the Little Theater at Felician will feature a November 16 staged reading of Betty Thorpe, written by James Armstrong and directed by Sharon Breslau, and a rededication ceremony on November 29.   

As Adams gears up for the grand opening, she recounts the months of painstakingly detailed planning and hard work that has gone into the theater’s renovation, as well as the surprising support she has received from area organizations.  “The energy and support behind this project has been incredible,” says Adams.  Evidence of that support can be seen in the theater’s newly installed lights and seats, both of which were donated by organizations that had excess due to reconstructions of their own.  The seats were donated from HMDC with the help of Bernie Nagel, and the lights were donated from MSNBC.  “I think people are excited and intrigued about the prospect of a small theater struggling to come to back life to serve a community it served so resplendently in the past,” says Adams.  The magic of live theater, says Adams, is universal.  “There’s something magical about theater that allows people from all walks of life to check their worries at the door and become immersed in the experience.” 

The theater, which has sat vacant for a decade and seen little activity over the past two decades, has a colorful history with strong historic ties to the Rutherford community.  It originated as a carriage house to a private residence in the late 1800s and later became part of Farleigh Dickinson University in 1942.  In the late 1940s, Dr. Peter Sammartino, President of Farleigh Dickinson University, converted the carriage house into a theater and asked renowned opera singer, Estelle Liebling—a personal friend of his—to serve as the Artistic Director for what became the “Estelle Liebling Little Theater.”  Estelle Liebling was a popular opera singer who also served as voice coach to a number of starlets including American coloratura soprano Beverly Sills and actress Meryl Streep.  From the 1940s through the 1950s, Liebling organized four operettas per year, and professors from Fairleigh Dickinson staged variety shows for students.  From the 1960s to early 1980s, the theater remained in operation staging small-scale productions and children’s theater.  The use of the theater dwindled in the early 1980s and closed altogether when Fairleigh Dickinson left, what is now Felician College’s Rutherford campus, in 1993.

For more information, or to purchase tickets for upcoming productions, call (201) 559-3323.