Local Phoenix Theater Worth Your Weekend

Phoenix's theater community operates on a scale and with a seriousness that the city's general cultural reputation doesn't fully acknowledge. The range from large-scale professional productions to intimate studio theater supports different kinds of engagement. Arizona Theatre Company, which divides its season between Phoenix and Tucson, is the largest professional theater organization in the state and produces a mix of American classics, contemporary work, and musical theater in the Herberger Theater Center on Civic Space Plaza. Childsplay, the nationally recognized theater company for young audiences, operates at the Sybil B. Harrington Campus for Theatre Education and Arts in Tempe and produces work as sophisticated as anything in the professional adult theater community. Black Theatre Troupe has operated in Phoenix since 1970 and represents one of the longest-running African American theater companies in the Southwest. The programming consistently foregrounds Black American experience with both historical and contemporary work. Theatre Artists Studio provides the most consistent output of intimate studio theater in central Phoenix, with a season emphasizing contemporary American plays in a small black-box environment.