If you love theater and plays that are feel-good entertainment, then a new enterprise in Theater 23 may be your ticket.
Theater 23 is headed up by its founding artistic director, Tom Eubanks, a self-proclaimed recovering Californian. Eubanks served as artistic director of Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard, California, from 2004-2018 and recounts being a writer and playwright for short stories and novels for most of his life, running theater companies in California for nearly 30 years.
He came to Knoxville in October 2021 with the intent to start another theater company, giving himself two years to get to know the town, the audience and the theater community. He directed a couple of theater companies in Knoxville before applying for the charter for Theater 23 in July 2023.
Eubanks believes his niche here falls somewhere between community theatre groups and professional organizations. He prefers to entertain rather than try to change the world.
Theater 23’s first production, a 2002 play by Arlene Hutton, As It Is in Heaven, was performed at the Old City Performing Arts Center from March 15-17 with a nine-member cast and 36 scenes.
For the future of Theater 23, Eubanks is looking for new plays that are more about entertainment than changing the world. He wants to produce plays that are unique and not ones that have been done so if you are a writer with a play script in your drawer, Tom Eubanks wants to read it!
Information for this article: Theater 23.
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