Category:Guthsville Playhouse, Allentown, Pennsylvania

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The Guthsville Playhouse was formed in a barn behind the Guthsville Hotel, just to the northwest of Allentown.

The theater and actors troupe was formed in June 1940, as the "Hayloft Summer Theater", performing in a barn which had been converted into a rustic theater seating, at most, 200 people, and had no heat, no air conditioning nor plumbing. The theater closed after the 1940 season due to World War II. It reopened in 1947. In 1949, the theater was reorganized and renamed "Guthsville Playhouse".

The Playhouse burned to the ground the evening of May 26, 1970, shortly after the cast finished rehearsing for the season-opening show, "Cactus Flower." Lacking a home that had been one of the nation's first theaters-in-the- round , Guthsville Playhouse was based temporarily at Dorney Park's Castle Garden before relocating in Cedar Crest College's Alumnae Hall in 1971 on a year-to-year lease.

Over the years, actors who performed there were John Carradine, Fay Emerson, Jack Lemmon, Jack Albertson and Rita Gam. Among the local Guthsville actors who became professional successes in recent years are Adam Grammis("A Chorus Line"), Ron Lucas ("The Magic Show"), both in the Broadway productions, and Lara Jill Miller, a featured player in the popular television sitcom, "Gimmie a Break."

In 1984, the theater was offered for sale by producer Larry Goldberg of Allentown and his fellow shareholders. I never sold and the theater was closed.

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