FTC - Virtual 2020 - Program

Marathon Community Theatre
The Marathon Community Theatre is a
non-profit community theatre and cinema
that has been an essential part of the
Florida Keys since 1944. Our aim is to
produce engaging, inspiring, high quality
theatrical productions that entertain our
diverse community of local citizens, seasonal
residents and large tourist population;
train and support the next generation
of theatre artists; provide arts education
programs that promote life-long learning
to our local community; and celebrate the
essential power of the arts to illuminate
our common humanity.
The Marathon Community Theatre
has had many homes since it began in
1944, beginning as a traveling troupe of
like-minded thespians. Our first productions
were held at local restaurants, resorts
and hotels, as well as at City Hall and the High School - with tents and travel trailers set up in parking lots
as the ‘Green Room’ for our actors to get into costume and make-up. In 1976 Marathon Community Theatre
was approved as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and our Board of Director began to dream of a permanent
stage for our annual theatre productions.
After five decades of traveling from building to building, the MCT Board of Directors, Membership and Volunteers
- along with our generous local community - came together to raise the necessary $200K needed to purchase
our current building, an older discotheque which happened to include a small cinema. The MCT members
and volunteers set to work renovating the building into the treasured theatre and cinema you see before
you today, with the musical Man of La Mancha kicking off the 1996-97 Season in the newly opened Marathon
Community Theatre and Cinema. Our theatre auditorium seats a total of 151 and our cinema seats a total of
100 per show.
Over the years MCT has striven to create a true Cultural Arts Center, revamping the cinema to provide up-todate
digital film complete with 3D features and a new sound system in 2013, paying off the original mortgage
in 2016, completing major repairs and a reroof after direct damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017, providing a
facelift to the interior theatre spaces and the building facade in 2018, installing a new digital lighting system in
the theatre auditorium in 2019 and replacement of four commercial air conditioners in 2020. We are currently
in the process of overhauling and reopening the Cinema to the public after its 8-month closure in 2020 from the
Pandemic.
The Marathon Community Theatre and Cinema offers art shows in our gallery, multiple weekly dance classes
provided free to our membership, annual holiday events and variety shows, gallery readings, guest performances,
four major main-stage productions per year, an annual community dance showcase and a six week
Summer Theatre Camp for children 6 to 18 years old.
Made up of an odd collection of boaters, postal workers, lawyers, office workers, construction laborers and
even a few local dolphin trainers, MCT is a direct reflection of our local community. Members range from
tweens to grandmas, pigtails to balding patterns, high tops to bunions. It’s not uncommon to see an 80-yearold
tap dancing across the stage or a young child wowing the audience with their amazing talents. All of the
members of MCT - on-stage and behind-the-scenes - are volunteers, with a very small staff of two handling
the daily management of the building and the Box Office. MCT is an eclectic blend of loveable misfits, bringing
talent to you in our little corner of paradise – The Florida Keys.
31 Florida Theatre Conference • 2020 • flatheatre.org