Parker Players Theater Company formed in 2019 in response to the loss of its permanent theater home. Originally the idea of Mark Parker and a few other Barrington dreamers, the community theater found its footing by offering a variety of productions featuring local talent and performing in a small black box theater space. When the state of Illinois purchased and leveled the theater to make way for construction of a railroad underpass, we chose to reinvent ourselves. We became a theater company with two goals; to craft productions of the highest quality and to secure a permanent theater home.

Since 2019, we have maintained our dedication to this vision. We’ve produced The Gift of the Magi, started production for The Fantasticks (shut down by the covid pandemic in 2020), staged three dinner theater cabarets as the pandemic receded, then returned vigorously with fully staged productions of Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web, Nora Ephron’s Love, Loss & What I Wore, Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men and the farcical comedy, Suite Surrender. We begin rehearsals for our upcoming play Ripcord by David Lindsey-Abaire at the end of September.

We’ve achieved all of this without a permanent theater home. We’ve utilized basements, garages, stables, and empty offices to build sets and rehearse. We’ve rented storage containers to house our technical equipment, props, and costumes. We’ve scouted and rented Barrington area restaurants and event spaces to present our productions, adapting each venue to provide the best theater experience possible.

In addition, we steadily increased awareness among the Chicagoland theater community of our commitment to providing a demanding yet supportive home for the artistic process.

We are Parker Players Theater Company, a small, visionary, and fearless team dedicated to delivering high quality theatrical productions to YOU.

We look forward to achieving our second goal; securing and building a state of the art theater building in and for Barrington.