![]() “When I first came to Charleston, there weren’t a lot of terribly interesting restaurants,” Wiles notes. You can compare theater’s growth here to that of the restaurant scene over the last few decades. He’ll lead the troupe through Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (October 12-28), Death of a Salesman (March 8-24, 2019), and Ken Ludwig’s A Comedy of Tenors (April 12-28, 2019). Porter worked in administration at Charleston Stage (the company based out of Dock Street Theatre) and is in his first year as executive director for the Footlight Players, now in their 87th season, at the Queen Street Playhouse. Their eighth season kicks off this fall at their shared, rented home at the Threshold Repertory Theatre with Gutenburg! The Musical! (November 30 to December 9) and will later stage Hair (May 2-12, 2019).Įven as What If? challenged norms, its founders knit themselves into the city’s theatrical fabric. “We were challenging the norm that we saw in the community at the time.”ĭespite its risqu é subject matter, the production was well-received, and What If? has since thrived. “People used the word ‘edgy’ to describe us, which was fair,” Barnette admits. While Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a musical about a transgender rock singer, is hardly the genteel entertainment one would have expected to find in 2010 at the American Theater on King Street, What If? Productions founders Kyle Barnette and Brian Porter didn’t move here to fit in. Spoleto Festival USAĬharleston is considered the nation’s most polite city, but that doesn’t mean its theater scene is stuffy. It’s made South Carolina’s newly largest city a place where you can eat a terrific meal, take in a memorable play, and stroll home through historic neighborhoods preserved in time. The buzz culminates each spring, when the Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo Spoleto festival debut international works and showcase the city’s best theatrical talent.Ī city with only 135,000 inhabitants (775,000 in the greater metro area), Charleston now offers a nightlife culture closing in on the likes of New York and Chicago, with over 15 production companies calling it home. Startups like What If? Productions have joined original alternative outlets such as PURE Theatre to build a fertile environment where professional-quality shows are performed nightly. Rebuilt as a hotel in 1809 and reopened as a theater in 1937, the room still anchors the local scene (and received a $19 million restoration in 2010).īut just as Charleston isn’t resting on its culinary laurels (envelope-pushing eateries like the globally-flavored Tu and tropical-inspired Wiki Wiki Sandbar still open at a breakneck pace), its theatrical offerings have expanded, too. But while history and food are the two pillars of Charleston’s tourist appeal, the Holy City's cultural offerings don’t end there.Ĭharleston’s theater scene has a rich history - the first theater built in the American colonies, Dock Street Theatre, opened in the French Quarter in 1736. In South Carolina Lowcountry, you can walk in George Washington’s footsteps in the morning, eat a lavish lunch prepared by a James Beard-recognized chef, travel across the harbor to Fort Sumter, then dine on fresh oysters steamed over an open fire at dinnertime.
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