[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 36 (Wednesday, March 1, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H1400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1045
                      NITTANY THEATRE AT THE BARN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate 
a true treasure in central Pennsylvania, actually in Boalsburg, 
Pennsylvania, the Nittany Theatre at the Barn. This one-of-a-kind 
theater has a storied history which started in the late 1800s as the 
service barn on a working farm.
  The Boal family settled the region for which the town Boalsburg is 
named. This town was on the main road for travelers from Philadelphia 
to Pittsburgh. The Boal Mansion estate, which dates to 1789, is a 
national registered landmark.
  The fourth generation of the Boal family, Colonel Theodore Davis 
Boal, married a descendant of Christopher Columbus and brought the 
Columbus Chapel to the Boal Mansion from Spain in 1909. This included 
an admiral's desk said to belong to Columbus himself. By the 1930s, the 
estate's aging barn was retired from farm use, but it would eventually 
take on a whole new life.
  Pierre Boal retired from the diplomatic service for the country 
following World War II. He wanted to make the family's estate into a 
regional museum to display the family's vast collection of treasures 
and artifacts. Mr. Boal hired Lillian Dickson-Major, an English stage 
and film actress and lover of history, to be the first curator of the 
new Boal Mansion Museum. She arrived in 1953 and immediately began 
preparing the estate for museum service. Lillian looked at the emptied 
barn and saw its potential as the site for a ``most unusual theatre.''
  At the same time, theater professionals throughout the country and at 
nearby Penn State University wondered how theater would continue to 
survive in a world that was captivated by television and Technicolor 
motion pictures. Pierre and Lillian invited several Penn State 
professors and theater specialists to make their plans. To close the 
deal, Pierre Boal leased the old barn to the newly formed Centre County 
Theatre Association for the generous sum of zero dollars as a means to 
invite and encourage culture and theater in Centre County. Entrusted to 
oversee the construction of a state-of-the-art arena theater, the 
Centre County Theatre Association brought life to Lillian's vision of 
the barn as a ``most unusual theatre.''
  After several years of preparations and construction, the theater 
opened at the barn in the summer of 1959 and was a tremendous success. 
Many audiences enjoyed the summer performances in the old barn for 
decades. After a long run, the community theater company let the old 
barn go dark, but it was only for a brief time before Nittany Theatre 
at the Barn took up the cause to breathe new life once again into the 
historic community treasure. State-of-the-art advancements were made at 
the barn, merging the latest technologies with good, old-fashioned 
summer stock theater.
  The house is stocked with 99 seats, retaining all the charm and 
intimacy that made the barn legendary. In addition, to enhance 
audiences' experiences, brand-new, state-of-the-art LED lighting and 
Broadway quality sound systems were installed. Nittany Theatre also 
partners with Penn State's School of Theatre to allow Penn State's 
young actors to share the stage with local seasoned actors.
  Mr. Speaker, this theater is full of history and full of life. For 
nearly 60 years, audiences in Happy Valley have enthusiastically 
embraced summer theater in Pennsylvania's oldest arena barn theater. I 
congratulate all those who have kept this community gem open for 
business throughout the years. As they say in the business, ``break a 
leg'' this summer.

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