What’s in a name? The Public Theater of San Antonio has gone by many in its 112-year history, starting as the San Antonio Dramatic Club, then becoming San Antonio Little Theatre in 1927, changing to San Pedro Playhouse in 1997 then The Playhouse San Antonio in 2012 and The Public in 2018.
Now the city’s longest-running theater company is returning to the name emblazoned on its 1929 Greek Revival-style building: San Pedro Playhouse.
When Asia Ciaravino was hired as the then-Public Theater’s new president and CEO in July, she said, “Everyone that I talked to and reconnected with from the theater community continued to say to me, please change the name back, please go back to the roots … please go back to what we all know and love.”
The name change is the latest in a flurry of significant moves from the partnering of The Public with the Classic Theatre of San Antonio in early July, to the shutdown of the 2023 season to “focus on rebuilding and reorganizing,” as Ciaravino said at the time, concurrently launching a $500,000 “Save the Playhouse” fundraising campaign.
Ciaravino said that campaign has far surpassed its goal, raising $800,000 to date, including a 2023 year-end $100,000 Challenge Grant from the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts and many small-dollar donations.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have people believe in this organization and know how important it is to continue to support arts that are building the next creative community,” she said.
The season restart kicked off with a fundraising gala in October, followed by the Classic Theatre’s production of On Golden Pond in the Cellar Theater directed by Ciaravino’s husband, Anthony Ciaravino, the American Sign Language adaptation of A Christmas Carol in December and Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun in February.
As with the current season’s upcoming Midsummer Sueño adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in April, in its just-announced 2024-2025 season the theater company will take advantage of its location to produce outdoor plays in surrounding San Pedro Springs Park.
As if in answer to the theater company’s name change, the March 2025 Shakespeare in the Park production Romeo and Juliet is the timeless romance that introduced the famous line “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet will be one of nine productions in a new season Ciaravino called “extremely ambitious,” including one-woman play ANN about all-caps personality former Texas Governor Ann Richards Nov. 8-24, a reprise of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story Nov. 29 to Dec. 22, The Frosty Follies: A Holiday Cabaret Conceived by Producing Artistic Director J. Robert “Jimmy” Moore Dec. 6–15, and the season closing Amadeus running June 5-29, 2025.
Information on the full season schedule and ticket pricing, including season subscriptions, will be available on the newly-branded San Pedro Playhouse website. Subscription sales begin May 6 and single-tickets go on sale starting July 1.
