A little theatre with a big heart, performing in one of Mechanicsburg’s most cherished historic buildings.
Est. 1950
A One-Room Schoolhouse Stage
The Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg makes its home in a building that began as a humble one-room schoolhouse — the kind of place where generations of small-town Pennsylvania children once learned their lessons. Today those same walls hold a different kind of education: the shared experience of live theatre, where neighbors become characters and an intimate room becomes any world a script can imagine.
Mechanicsburg’s history runs deep — a borough shaped by the railroad, by industry, and by a tight-knit community that has always made room for the arts. LTM carries that heritage forward, proudly volunteer-run for 75+ years.
Our Mission
The Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg strives to provide high-quality entertainment in an intimate setting to mid-state audiences, while simultaneously educating and enriching the lives of volunteer directors, performers, and production staff.
Some History…
Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg thrives as an all-volunteer community theatre because our current volunteers have the same spirit and love for theatre today that began with a small group of people who loved theatre and met at the Mechanicsburg Junior High School to read plays in the late 1940s. This group’s enthusiasm led to the incorporation of the Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg in 1950.
The one-room, red-brick Kohlertown School House building, located at 915 South York Street (Mechanicsburg) was purchased in 1964 for ten dollars. The schoolhouse, built in 1863, became the Theatre house, with only a pot-bellied coal stove providing heat during the winter months.
Up until the 1970s, there were no dressing rooms or indoor restrooms. Actors had to change costumes in cars, warmed themselves in the winter by a small fire in the parking lot, and entered the stage directly from the outdoors. The original brick outhouse (now used to store lawn and garden tools) served as the only restroom for both audiences and actors.
Over the past three decades, many additions and improvements to the building have been made possible by volunteers and charitable contributions from corporations and individuals, including: two lobby spaces with restrooms for patrons, two dressing rooms with a restroom for the cast, a light booth, new seats and a new sound system. With the early renovations, the building lost its historical status, but gained much needed and valued space.
Since its inception, the Theatre has read or performed original works. The first show documented to have been performed on the stage was an original Christmas production. A Playwrights’ Workshop was established under the umbrella of LTM in 1998.
LTM hired its first part-time, salaried worker in 1998 to improve Box Office operations. Since then, LTM has returned to an all-volunteer organization in every aspect of production and operations.
The Theatre became one of the original affiliates of the Allied Arts Fund in 1985.
LTM has been a member of the American Association of Community Theatre (AACT) since 1998.
The theatre became a member of the Mechanicsburg Chamber of Commerce in 1998 and has participated in related community functions over the years, including Halloween Haunted Houses, Christmas Tree Lightings in the Square, Jubilee Day, and most recently, the first annual Non-Profit Day in Mechanicsburg.
As a non-profit organization, LTM’s purpose is to promote the highest standards in production and appreciation of the theatre arts by conducting a civil, cultural, and educational program. LTM is exclusively educational, within the intendment of Section 501(c) 3 of the 1954 United States Internal Revenue Code.