Down St. Stephen's Alley

August 21, 1995 - article in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Douglas J. Keating:

"When the Arden Theatre Company left St. Stephen's Alley Performing Arts Center for its new home in Old City last month, Philadelphia gained a much-needed theater space . . well, not exactly, not yet."

"The building, of course, is still there, tucked into Ludlow Street, behind St. Stephen's Episcopal Church on Tenth Street . . The trouble is that quarters on the second floor where the Arden produced plays for five seasons are no longer a theater. The seats, lights, and other appurtenances that made the space a place to stage plays were the property of the Arden, and the company took them . . "

"' We can't have an empty room,' the Rev. Charles T.A. Flood, rector of St. Stephen's, said of the space in the church's Community House Building."

"Father Flood wants to reinstall the lighting and seats and get the theater and get the theater back in business. He says that he needs $150,000 to do that and make other improvements, including installing air conditioning to accommodate summer shows.  . . . Father Flood would like to have the theater operating at the beginning of the 1996-97 season."

"The Lantern Theater, a new troupe that produced its first two plays last season, is working with the church on the project . . Father Flood stressed that the church does not want the theater to become the performing venue for a single company  . . . If a good portion of the $150,000 is not pledged by then, Father Flood anticipated the project will be shelved."

(Note: by April 1996, another article entitled "Funding shaky, but playhouse at St. Stephen's remains open" announced that the Lantern Theater would stay at St. Stephen's for now.  "Mr. Flood said he decided to keep the theater operating because Lantern's two plays drew good-sized audiences and proved the theater could pretty much break even financially.")

Some of the earliest shows at the Lantern were Playboy of the Western World (1995) and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1996)

Above, Pete Pryor, Dave Jadico and John Lopes in Richard III (March 2006).

Mary Martello as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet with Geoff Sobelle (2009).

A February 2021 photo taken by Heather Khalifa of the Philadelphia Inquirer, showing Charles and Stacy posing in masks on the empty Lantern Theater stage during the COVID shutdown.

Finally, Chris Colucci's artful photo of me and Charles during our onstage interview, that you can hear in the podcast episode.