Dobama Theatre is a theater founded in Cleveland Heights, Ohio in 1959 by Donald and Marilyn Bianchi, Barry Silverman, and Mark Silverberg. The name Dobama was created from the first two letters of each man's name. The first play produced by Dobama Theatre was The Rope Dancers by Morton Wishengrod.
After almost ten years as a nomadic theater company using various spaces around Cleveland, Dobama established a permanent home on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights in 1968. From its origin, the artistic director was Donald Bianchi, though his wife Marilyn Bianchi was a strong artistic presence until her death in 1977.
From 1991 to the end of 2008, Dobama has been managed by artistic director Joyce Casey, who made Dobama a "leading producer of new and recent plays".
In 2005 Dobama was evicted from the Coventry neighborhood, resuming a nomadic existence, and producing shows at various locations, including the Cleveland Play House.
On September 25, 2009 Dobama inaugurated a new, permanent location at the Cleveland Heights Public Library facility, stewarded by the company's third artistic director, Joel Hammer.
From its founding to the present Dobama has been known for producing alternative work that would not otherwise be seen in Cleveland. This ranges from their initial production in 1959 to a powerful staging of The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill and their many current productions of new and Off Broadway work.
Read more about Dobama Theatre: Marilyn Bianchi Kids' Playwriting Festival
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)