History:
Wyoming Players to CenterStage Players: Over a Hundred Years of Community Theater
In 1885 local residents could reach downtown Cincinnati and its cultural attractions only by a train ride of over an hour, or a day-long trip by horse and buggy. In that year a group of local performers gathered in the Wyoming district's two-room schoolhouse to present "The Dowager", an English comedy of manners by Charles Matthews. After several changes of both name and venue, Wyoming Players came into existence.
The group acquired a new home in 1886 thanks to the construction of a new facility, The Amusement Hall, which included a stage. Performances were inaugurated by touring Shakespearean James Murdoch in the then-popular drama "Hazel Kirk", after which the local actors used The Amusement Hall for many years.
Although the Players' main interest was in doing their own productions of comedy and drama, they occasionally presented other kinds of performances. One of these was a "Game of Living Chessmen" in which two chess players conducted a real game by directing actors who represented the chess pieces around a giant board laid out on the stage floor.
On another occasion, they hosted an exhibition by Olympian Albert Tyler of his pole vault technique - at the time Tyler held the world record with a vault of just 11' 2"!
In the early 1950's a new Wyoming Civic Center was built at the corner of Springfield Pike and Worthington Avenue. The Center was built with a large common room which could be used as an auditorium, but lacked a proscenium stage or backstage area. The Wyoming Players undertook a fundraising effort to finance removal of part of the west wall and construction of a stage house addition. This was the Players' home base for approximately thirty years.
In 1984 the Players moved to Fay Centennial Auditorium in the Wyoming Middle School. Productions at this site included a celebration of the group's centennial in 1985, with a reunion of members and a performance of the Players' first show, The Dowager.
It was "back to the future" in August 2002 as the Players returned to their former home at the Wyoming Civic Center, with a production of Barefoot in the Park.
In June 2007, Wyoming Players was selected to represent the Southwest Region at the State of Ohio OCTAfest competition over Labor Day weekend with the critically acclaimed production of “Talk Radio” by Eric Bogosian.
In mid 2007 the Wyoming Board of Directors voted unanimously to move their productions out of the Civic Center to the Monmouth Theater in Newport, KY.
In 2012, the board of directors voted to change their name to CenterStage Players, Inc., and at the same time to move back to Cincinnati, to a their new home in North College Hill at the North College Hill City Center.
