Anyone wishing to contact the board of directors or the artistic team, please email: stationtheatre.cu@gmail.com
Our Mission
The Station Theatre challenges and entertains our audiences with classic plays, musicals, and innovative works. We seek out and nurture local talent, providing a supportive environment that fosters a love of all things theatre. We encourage and explore ideas, beliefs, and relationships in order to better understand the world we inhabit and the diverse voices that envelop us.
Our Programming
The Station Theatre puts on productions, special events, workshops and play readings year-round. We are continually exploring new ways to serve our diverse community and welcome input and suggestions.
Scholarship
The Celebration Company awards an annual scholarship to a deserving young company member in memory of our beloved friend Danny Sullivan.
Bylaws & Standards of Conduct
Founded by Rick Orr in 1972, the Celebration Company at the Station Theatre has a long and rich history of producing exceptional live theatre in our Urbana home. Supported by countless dedicated volunteers, the theatre grew and thrived under Rick’s leadership for nearly five decades.
UPDATES:
On August 31, 2021, Rick announced his decision to step down from his long-standing roles as Artistic Director and board member. As we approach our 50th season, Rick’s legacy, vision, and extraordinary commitment will have a lasting impact on the future of our company.
Under Rick’s artistic leadership, Station audiences enjoyed a wide array of productions – season after season – including groundbreaking scripts, classics, musicals, and children’s shows, as well as intimate and provocative plays exploring controversial issues. He directed more than 120 productions, from “The Fantasticks” in 1972 to “A Doll’s House, Part 2” in 2019. He has cultivated ongoing relationships with passionate artists and patrons whose lives have been enriched by the Station Theatre. Rick shares memories and details of the theatre's first four decades in this 2011 interview.
With this transition to a new chapter for the Station, our newly-elected board of directors is energized to prepare the theatre for its next 50 years. We recognize that institutional growth is difficult and certainly takes time and support. We continue to take steps to better represent and serve our diverse community, building on our successful programs from the past year. We look forward to broadening our company, our audience, our theatrical offerings, and to welcoming back familiar faces.
History
The Big Four Railroad, 1923
The Station was constructed in 1923 as a passenger station for the Big Four Railroad. It was the third station built for the line in Urbana and the second one built on the site. Travelers boarding at Urbana could ride as far as Indianapolis to the east and as far as Pekin to the west. Arriving passengers could transfer to the Wabash Railroad, which passed the building on the south side.
Although there is little left to show it, in the early part of this century the Big Four was one of Urbana's major industries, employing over four hundred people at its peak. On the land east of the theatre were a switching yard, a large roundhouse capable of servicing fifteen locomotives simultaneously, and a dozen or so machine shops to support it all.
The energy needed to run the complex of shops required a huge power plant with a smokestack 133.5 feet tall. This smokestack dominated the skyline of Urbana until it was felled in 1959.
The advent of multilane, highspeed highways in the fifties hastened the decline ofpassenger rail service. The Urbana passenger station was closed in 1956, the same year work began on Interstate 74. The last passenger train stopped at the Station on October 14, 1957.
The Celebration Company maintains ownership of the building and over the years has added to the landscape to provide an attractive historical site.
The Depot Theatre, 1972
“Theatre should always be a celebration” were the rousing words that inspired Rick Orr, founder of The Celebration Company at the Station Theatre, to purchase the Depot Theatre in Urbana and form a live theatre company dedicated to embodying that mission. Even in that inaugural season, The Celebration Company pursued cutting-edge works, from The Fantasticks to Pinter’s Old Times, and now, 50+ years later, the company remains dedicated to entertaining, challenging, and inspiring audiences and training actors and technicians with year-round live theatre in the same former train station.