Arena Players, Inc.

Baltimore’s Arena Players is the oldest continuously operating African-American community theater in the United States. From its humble beginnings in 1953, by a small aspiring group of ambitious fledgling actors, Arena Players has a proud history of community service and outstanding dramatic achievements.

Our mission is to entertain, educate, and serve the Baltimore community. We nurture and give growth to new, emerging, and established artists through cross-cultural endeavors, while boldly illuminating the African-American experience through the performing arts.

• Theatre arts have a unique capability to regenerate the human spirit and that no other art form so totally embraces the whole being or so enriches one’s self awareness and relationship to others.
• Arena Players is a community theatre ounded and dependent upon the interactions of people who combine their knowledge, interest, and pursuit of effort to perpetuate the organization. Herein is an opportunity for the development and display of the talents, technical skills, and crafts of all who would pursue the theater arts as a career, a vocation, or audience member.
• Involvement in Arena Players has a reciprocal value and experiences are self rewarding.
• It is the responsibility of the individuals to strive and develop their talents as a ready source for the good of the organization.
• The corporation has the responsibility of facilitating the development of the talents of all that enter the playhouse.
• Arena Players is in service to the good of the community, its cultural growth, and well being.
• That Arena Players should provide the community with a physical facility wherein all who are interested may avail themselves of the opportunity to participate in the theater arts.