Arts & Culture in Yeadon

Awarded Best Movie Night by Philadelphia magazine in 2011, Cinema 16:9 projects theatrical run movies along with independent, foreign, and classic films in surround sound and full HD projection. Comprising two screens and 100 comfortable stadium-style seats, the theater also welcomes visitors to BYOB while catching a flick.

With a passion for historic movie theaters—and a simultaneous disappointment with the unoriginality of major multiplexes—founder David Titus has created a modern moviegoing experience that maintains the uniqueness and charm of Golden Age movie theaters. Along with an eclectic list of screenings, the theater features creative programming such as Terrible Tuesday, during which audiences mock terrible films; 8-Bit Warrior Wednesday, at which attendees play classic NES and SuperNES games on the big screen; and Dinner and a Movie, which includes discounted movie tickets and discounted meals at great local restaurants.

For those who like to watch movies at home, the theater’s movie-rental program features more than 3,000 titles on DVD and Blu-ray. All-out cinephiles can benefit from the theater’s membership program, which offers plans with unlimited movie tickets and rentals. The theater also hosts private movie screenings for birthday parties and challenging knitting parties and boasts a full concession stand that doles out organic and local foodstuffs in eco-friendly containers.

Dazzling audiences since 1911, Plays and Players boasts a troupe of talented thespians ready to take on Lost in Yonkers, a play that has won four Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and countless fist pumps. The complex and sharp-witted coming-of-age story follows two brothers sent to live in Yonkers, New York. Written by Neil Simon and directed by Betty Chomentowski, the approximately two-hour comedic drama depicts the struggles the brothers face after their father sends them to live with their immigrant grandmother, simple-minded aunt, and hooligan uncle. During the performance's 15-minute intermission, audience members can wipe tears of laughter from their eyes or mend the tears in their skulls incurred while thinking too deeply about the play's lessons on family relationships.

In professional theaters, Macbeth is euphemistically referred to as “the Scottish play” in order to avoid invoking the name that summons the ghosts of dyspeptic bagpipe players. Witness the danger firsthand with the PST's re-imagining, wherein the play's claustrophobic themes of madness are pictorially recreated with dramatic Asian music and theater forms. The opposite side of this Janus head is A Midsummer Night's Dream, a colorful romp through a fairy-infested forest that stands in stark contrast to the inward spiral of Lord and Lady Macbeth's dreadful natures. Thick with bright hues and inspired by Indian music and movement, PST's Midsummer liberates the senses from their corporeal soul-sack and guides them through the fumbles, foibles, and philandering ways of love, life, and leaving. No matter which story is witnessed, the audience is sure to enjoy plays performed with passion and panache by a theater company dedicated to Shakespearean productions.

The Mann Center is a prepossessing structure from anywhere you sit in the semi-covered amphitheater—all huge, rough slabs of timber that evoke the setting for a barn dance held by elegant giants. Even the lawn section isn’t an ordinary lawn: from the top of the steep hill where the theater perches, audiences can see not only the performers lighting up the stage below but also the canopy of trees in surrounding Fairmount Park and the city skyline just beyond.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts proudly stands as the apex of Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. Aiming to entertain a broad audience, the space’s soaring vaulted-glass ceilings ring with the sounds of the Broadway shows, jazz concerts, world music, and classical performances contained in its many concert halls and theatres, including the adjoining Merriam Theater. Opened in 1918, the Merriam has hosted legendary thespians such as John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn, and Sir Laurence Olivier throughout the decades and continues its legacy today by hosting touring shows of all types.

Although the New City Stage Company attracts equity actors and union crews, fostering local talent has been a priority since it began producing in 2006. Commissioning and mounting professional productions of contemporary works and classic plays, the company strives to stimulate patrons and students with shows that are often edgy and thought provoking, like a finely whetted Rubik’s cube. But whether hosting a Philadelphia premier or staging an award-winning rarity, the theater group always places an emphasis on the work of local playwrights and performers.