Lynne Brown-Tepper was 10 or 11 years old when she saw her first Circle Theatre show. It was Cabaret, the sex-drenched musical set during the rise of Nazism.
“My mother was notorious for not researching shows,” she said, laughing. “My dance teacher was in it, so we went. That show made a huge impact on me.”
In college, Brown-Tepper studied English and social work, but the impact of watching theater didn’t disappear. She started to act. A natural introvert, she found singing, dancing, and acting to be more enjoyable than she ever would have thought.
“I told my mother, ‘I know what I want to do with my life.’ She said, ‘Please don’t be a stripper.’”
She threw herself into the theater. In 2000, she became Circle Theatre’s production manager. Since 2008, she’s been its executive director. She’s steered the company out of debt and through the challenges of the pandemic, always with an eye toward providing the community with meaningful and entertaining live theater, including in this, its 2025 season.
When creating the season, there were, as there always are, limitations. Not all shows are available; big shows, after leaving Broadway, tend to tour nationally before being made available to professional, regional theaters, and then community theaters.
Budget plays into choices, as do space considerations (not all shows would work on Circle’s circular stage). Diversity matters; the theater wants to provide opportunities widely, not just in terms of ethnicity and gender but age and even class background. Providing directors and actors shows that will stretch their skills is important. And it’s critical to stage shows the community will want to see.
“My season would be all Sondheim,” she said, laughing. “But something popular in the theater community might not be as familiar to everyone.” What gets people to leave their homes and travel to the theater varies at times–when it’s stressful, people tend to want light entertainment, including farces–and that needs to be considered, too. It’s the public service model of the arts: excellence not for its own sake, but to serve the community of theater-goers, some who arrive from other cities and even other states.
The season begins with The Prom, which plays May 15-31. Adapted into a 2020 film starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and James Corden, The Prom tells the story of two Broadway performers labeled self-absorbed narcissists by the press. To clean up their image, they decide to take up a cause: that of Emma, an Indiana teen whose high school canceled its prom rather than let her bring her girlfriend as a date. Major critics have called it a hugely joyful, hilarious and moving show.
Next up is The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), a wild, possibly manic, quite possibly insane show condensing 37 plays into a little over and hour and a half. “It’s like getting on a moving train,” Tepper-Brown said. “You have three guys doing these crazy characters, throwing off wigs, putting other wigs on…it’s hysterical. People laugh so hard they cry.” Whether you’re a huge Shakespeare admirer or not–and she admits that his stuff isn’t really her jam–you’ll be unable to resist this. The show plays June 12-28.
Next, running July 10-26, Dreamgirls dramatises the meteoric rise of The Dreamettes, a fictional black girl group out of Chicago. Suffused with ambition, pain, and triumph, and suffused with the sound of Motown, Dreamgirls connects with audiences. In 2006, it was made into a hugely successful film starring Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy.
The title Girls' Weekend sounds like it might belong to a gently comic drama about the importance of living, laughing, loving, and drinking wine. Nope. This is a farce, with all the slammed doors, cases of mistaken identity, and general craziness that the word implies. Four women travel to a cabin for some time together, but ovulation, a secret affair, and the glittering promise of a bar intrude. Energetic and hilarious, Girls’ Weekend runs August 7-23.
The season ends with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar (September 4-20). The story of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, the rock musical has been onstage at Civic before, in 1986, 1997, and 2014. “I was stalking to one of our patrons,” Brown-Tepper said. “She said when that concept album came out, there had been nothing like it, not even on the radio. It became an obsession. And it’s been passed from generation to generation.”
Many generations have had the opportunity to take in shows at Circle in the decades since its 1953 founding. The first season featured several shows still performed around the country today: The Philadelphia Story, The Glass Menagerie, Harvey. “I feel that legacy almost every single day,” Brown-Tepper said. “I see myself as a guardian.”
Thanks to that guardianship–and to the small staff and the army of volunteers also manning the ramparts–Circle Theatre’s legacy lives on.
