By Ralph Spiegel – In the Spring of 1999, 25 enterprising Sun City residents received a charter as this community’s first theatre club. It was called “Act One” and shortly thereafter, in collaboration with the Sun City Chorus, they staged their first memorized and ticketed event “A Sentimental Journey Through the 40’s”.
The following year, Act One offered “An Evening of One Acts” in the pavilion and “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” followed in one of the Pinckney Hall meeting rooms, not the 24 foot stage. In 2001, the club was officially renamed the Sun City Community Theatre.In the beginning Sun City Community Theatre was nurtured by Carl and Anne Nusbaum, who came from a theatre in Carefree, Arizona. Early productions often utilized meeting rooms in Pinckney Hall rather than the small stage. 2004 brought with it the first real musical, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”.
Later that year and for the ensuing 3 years, members of SCCT Board made a variety of presentations to Del Webb/Pulte about putting up a dedicated theater which they insisted would bolster housing sales. Del Webb had built multi performance buildings in other communities, however those building were never fully utilized by the residents. In the summer of 2006, I had joined the SCCT Board and negotiated the use of the Bluffton High School auditorium for the musical production of “1776”. Sun City residents drove to follow SCCT productions and put over 2000 sets of eyes on an off-campus production. Wow, that was that an eye-opener…a raked audience seating that allowed people to actually have an unobstructed view of the stage with state of the art lighting and sound.
SCCT went back to the Dell Webb/Pulte to re-suggest a theater be built on campus to house the Theater Club and Music Guild productions. In 2008 Del Webb/Pulte finally agreed to build Magnolia Hall and construction was scheduled to be completed by 2010. We have been performing there ever since.
In 2023, we changed our name to Sun City Theatre.
