Stage 3 Theatre Company was founded in 1993 to find, develop and produce new and contemporary works by established and upcoming playwrights. Stage 3 is proud of the critically acclaimed body of work it has been able to present in our region, and of the voice they have been able to give to new theatre artists from around the country. They call themselves "the adventurous theatre company" and we remain committed to bringing the best in contemporary theatre to a growing audience of adventurous theatre patrons.
Their productions have included regional premieres of playwrights such as David Ives, Jeffery Hatcher, Richard Greeenberg, Linda Eisenstein, and Jane Martin. Stage 3 is especially proud to have presented the World Premiere of California playwright Rick Foster's Gunpowder Man and Women of the Bear, and to have premiered the U.S. productions of two outstanding Canadian plays, The Wild Guys and All Grown Up.
Their Annual Festival of New Plays attracts submissions from playwrights all over the world and culminates in a weekend of staged readings and the World Premiere production of the winning piece. Past winners include Crows Landing Gently, Gently by California playwright, Michael Lynch, The Return to Morality by Chicago playwright, Jamie Pachino, Panama by Michael Folie, and A Show of Her Own by Suzanne Wingrove.
Modesto Bee theatre critic Leo Stutzen has called Stage 3, " . . .the best thing to happen in this region in many years. The region’s only theatre that regularly tackles new and challenging works, and almost as regularly turns them into persuasive reasons for believing theatre is an art with a future." Stockton Record theatre critic Sherman Spencer says, "Stage 3 provides an unusually high standard of innovative, worthwhile, and entertaining theatre."
