MONSTER BOX THEATRE
Celebrating 10 Years of Live Performance
MBT is...
Our mission-statement reads:
"Monster Box Theatre is an award-winning, professional live-performance theatre dedicated to bringing creative and innovative productions to the stage. New ideas and open minds are encouraged. All are welcome. With a primary goal of enriching the community through the performing arts, we endeavor to reach out in all ways possible, not just through performances, but also training, classes, events, public festivals, and any interaction that allows us the opportunity for community to engage meaningfully with the arts."
The Past
(in a sentence)
Prior to Covid-19, and our shut-down in March 2020, Monster Box Theatre thrived for over 8 years, performing over 100 distinct shows which consisted of over 1,000 successful individual performances, in addition to hosting countless classes, camps, and educational programs including youth, under-served, and special-needs.
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The Present
We are so grateful and excited to have found a new home in which to continue our journey. We feel we have the perfect fit in Jackson with a building in the heart of an exciting, revitalizing downtown. We also realized very quickly that this is not just a city. It is a strong, historic, amazing community. And to be a successful part of that, we would have to commit 100% to being a consistent, reliable, and long-term asset to that community as well as all the businesses in the area. With this in mind, we redirected the last of our assets to purchase our building and we are here to stay.
We have already performed over 100 live performances in Jackson County in one form or another. We have also participated in many of the festivals and even hosted a 5-day Arts Festival of our own in 2023 (The Jackson Festival for the Arts) with the help of so many great Jackson businesses and organizations. We have, so far, taught 34 classes in Jackson on performance, ranging from children to seniors and have established permanent classes with local facilities teaching performance therapy to those with special needs.
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The Future
(We have the biggest of plans)
We intend to keep expanding all of the above-mentioned programs, in addition to bringing back our highly-acclaimed youth theatre program in 2024. There are truly too many new things in the works to list. And many of these events are intended to bring people from all over Michigan and even surrounding states to Jackson to see the exciting things we have going on.
Possibly the most significant of these projects is being able to open the doors of our own theater to the public this year. Being a 501c3 non-profit arts organization, we are always putting our funds directly back into performances and projects. But, also being a location where people come together, we were completely shut down by the pandemic and only were able to get things moving again by restarting here. Our building however was in a state of severe disrepair and in no way complied with any current codes or accessibility requirements. Long story short, we're getting there, and we're very excited to be still hoping for an opening in 2024.
As a final note, we only recently added the above, last paragraph since so many are inquiring about the status of our opening. It is informational only, and intended to share our situation and answer some questions for those who are interested. We do not feel this is the page to solicit for financial help, but please look at the rest of our website for more information, or call or text us at 248.787.5365 regarding this or any other questions you may have.
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We would love to hear from you.
​- The Monster Box Theatre Board of Directors