Near West Theatre is an independent, nonprofit theatre troupe housed in a 275-seat venue in the Gordon Square Arts District of the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood of

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. Located along the major thoroughfare Detroit Avenue, two blocks from Cleveland Public Theatre, Near West specializes in musical productions with casts of all ages, with a special emphasis on serving at-risk youth in the Cleveland area. It was founded in May 1978 by Stephanie Morrison, George Hrbek, and Robert Scullin as the Near West Side Shared Ministry Youth Theatre. Its first musical director was Robert Schenk, who directed a production of

Godspell ''Godspell'' is a musical composed by Stephen Schwartz with book by John-Michael Tebelak. The show is structured as a series of parables, primarily based on the Gospel of Matthew, interspersed with music mostly set to lyrics from traditional hym ...

in the summer of 1978. The troupe built its new facility over the course of 2014 for $7.3 million, which it raised as part of a wider $30 million Gordon Square Arts District campaign. From 1978 to 2014, the theatre performed in the third-floor ballroom of St. Patrick Church's Catholic Club Building at 3006 Bridge Ave. in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. Prior to opening its state-of-the-art space in 2015, the company rented out various spaces to mount their sizable productions.

References

Theatres in Cleveland 1978 establishments in Ohio {{theatre-stub