Open Eye Theater Records

The Open Eye Theater, a non-profit theater company for young and multi-generational audiences, was founded in 1972 in New York City by Jean Erdman and her husband, Joseph Campbell, as the primary project of the Foundation for the Open Eye, Inc. The company was originally named The Open Eye: NEW STAGINGS. In 1995, the name was changed to Open Eye Theater and the administrative offices were moved to Delaware County, New York. The move from New York City left the company with no permanent performance venue. Until 2004 the company toured Delaware County and New York City boroughs and was in residence at the Roxbury Arts Center and the Dry Brook Community Center in the Catskill Mountains. The Open Eye Theater moved to a permanent performance and office space in Margaretville, New York in 2004.

Open Eye has a Main Stage Season and a Rehearsed Reading Series. Under the leadership of Amie Brockway, the Producing Artistic Director since the late 1980s, this theater has gained a national reputation for developing and producing new plays written by local and nationally known playwrights for young audiences. Playwrights for youth who have been in residence include: Sandra Fenichel Asher, John Newman, Moses Goldberg, R. N. Sandberg, Ric Averill and Amie Brockway.

The education program began in 1991 with summer classes in the Catskill Mountains and expanded to year-round in 1994. In 2000 with an Empire State Partnership with Margaretville Central School and funding from the New York State Council on the Arts, Open Eye education specialists wrote an innovative theater curriculum that was taught in kindergarten through high school classrooms and via in-school residencies. After school, weekend and summer Youth Theater Workshops were also offered. All of these programs provide opportunities for local young people and adults to study, rehearse and perform with guest professional theater artists and playwrights.

The Open Eye Theater is dedicated to: creating, developing and producing plays for a diverse audience in the Catskill Mountains; providing children, youth and adult artists-in-training with quality hands-on education and theater arts experiences; offering professional theater artists a creative environment where they may hone their craft; and developing a new theater audience in the rural villages of the Catskill Mountains.