The Footlight Club

You can see a play in the same Jamaica Plain hall the Footlight Club has used since 1878. The club has produced a show every year since 1877, and it is America’s oldest community theater. Eliot Hall is a Greek Revival and Italianate building from 1832, and the theater is on the second floor. The first production, A Scrap of Paper, opened on February 9, 1877, at the German Theater in the Boylston Street railway station. In 1889 the church across Eliot Street was going to tear the hall down, so members bought the building.

Neighbors, families, and friends put on the plays and musicals. Between 1929 and 1939 the club presented 15 Boston theatrical premieres, three of which were American premieres.