Irvington Theater Looks to First Summer Season

Though “theater” has been part of the Irvington Theater name for decades, the venue has always had a broader mission.

“What we really are is a performing arts center – music, dance, theater, film and comedy,” says Greg Allen, the theater’s manager.

Allen explains that the 432-seat theater serves as a rental facility for everything from The Nutcracker to the upcoming The Jackie Mason Musical (April 19 and 20), about the late stand-up comedian and actor. It also partners with other theater companies that stage their productions at the venue, like the performing arts school Broadway Training Center of Westchester, whose The Hello Girls runs March 28-30, and community theater group the Clocktower Players.

Allen adds that Irvington Theater is also a producing organization, with its fifth annual Arts Incubator Short Play Fest offering staged readings of new, developing works and playwright Q&As (Feb. 22); and the All Shorts Irvington Film Festival (As IFF), featuring animated, live-action and documentary shorts (April 26).

What this multifaceted organization hasn’t been, though, is a year-round venue. It has typically operated from September through May due to lack of air-conditioning – until now.

Bringing the Theater Back to Life

This year, the Theater will celebrate its first summer season, thanks to a $1 million-plus renovation – funded by the Village of Irvington and New York State – that included a new HVAC and sound system, color scheme, carpeting and signage. Allen explains that once they began drilling into the walls of the 1902 building – a Classical Revival-style structure designed by A.J. Manning and modeled after Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. – they realized that other things needed updating.

Renovation is nothing new for the Irvington Theater.  Over the years, the venue had been at the heart of the village, hosting balls and cotillions, recitals and concerts, graduations and public meetings. The American dramatic soprano Lillian Nordica sang there. Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt spoke there. And The Original Amateur Hour, a post-World War II precursor to American Idol, held auditions there, as its host, Ted Mack, was an Irvington resident.

But by 1960, the theater had fallen into disuse – save for the occasional exhibit or Boy Scouts’ campout – which soon led to disrepair. In 1978, however, a group of villagers joined forces with the Junior League of Westchester-on-the-Hudson to bring the theater back to life. The group raised $20,000, which the village matched fourfold. The building underwent a makeover involving new safety systems – including two staircases and an elevator to access the theater, as well as upgraded plumbing and lighting, and paint and plaster restored to its early-20^th century luster.  

By 1980, the new Irvington Town Hall Theater, as it was then known – even though Irvington is not a town but a village in the town of Greenburgh – was ready for its close-up as was the new mayor-appointed Irvington Theater Commission that serves as its policy-making arm.

Surviving the Pandemic and Beyond

Allen recalled 2019 as a “great year” in the four decades since that renovation. The theater was continuing an upward trajectory until, that is, March 12, 2020, when Allen had to break the news to the Clocktower Players in the middle of tech week for a new production, that the theater was going dark due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It wouldn’t reopen until the tail end of 2024.

But the spirit of Irvington Theater, as it was renamed six years ago, never went dark. The theater produced an online solo music series and made a film of Allen’s children’s book, Irving the Theater Nut (ASD Media, 2018) about a squirrel that got into the theater the year he arrived, 2014. As IFF, which had been founded in 2015, went virtual. And there were collaborations with organizations like Mercy University. In all, Allen said, the theater produced 40 cultural events in its four “dark” years.

And then there was the latest renovation, which Allen had been researching since 2018, taking a tour of Ford’s Theatre to see how to air condition an historic landmark, one that’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1984. Fast forward to 2025 and the theater now looks to its first summer season.

“It’s a story of perseverance,” says Allen. And of the theater’s faithful, he adds: “We’re lucky people have stood by us.”

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_{Photos: The newly renovated Irvington Theater (photos courtesy of the theater)}

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