Thirty theater artists left New York City in 1985 and bought a shuttered Art Deco vaudeville house in Ellenville. Forty years later it's still turning out Broadway-caliber acting (Sean Astin, Judd Hirsch, and David Strathairn have all worked here) for a fraction of the ticket price.
Heads upThe season runs May through October; call ahead for current show dates and times. Tickets often sell out, especially for popular productions. The theater has two spaces: the MainStage (larger house for plays and musicals) and the Studio (intimate space for experimental work).
In 1985, about thirty theater artists calling themselves the Cooperative Artists left New York City together and bought Ellenville's vacant Shadowland Theatre, a 400-plus-seat 1920s Art Deco vaudeville and movie house that had sat empty for years. Four decades later the company has grown into a three-building campus on Canal Street: the restored Art Deco MainStage, a Studio built out of a mid-century former department store, and actor housing carved from an old auto parts store. Brendan Burke has run the place as artistic director since 2005, directing or producing more than a hundred shows here, working with actors like Sean Astin, Judd Hirsch, David Strathairn, and Richard Benjamin along the way.
The 2026 lineup
Shadowland's season runs May through October. It opens with The Reservoir, an off-Broadway play about a young man sent home to Denver to face his drinking, arriving in Ellenville almost as soon as its New York run ends. Then comes a musical, in-the-round staging of Around the World in 80 Days with a small cast playing dozens of parts, Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, Never Can Say Goodbye (a jukebox sequel to the company's earlier hit Beehive, built around '70s hits), Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill staged in the Studio around Billie Holiday's last performances, and a closing world premiere, Flawless, by John J. Wooten, about a playwright entangled with an AI chasing the next great American play.
Broadway caliber, Ellenville prices
Every seat in the Art Deco house has a clean sightline to the stage, and the acting is Broadway-trained without the Broadway ticket price: you're watching the same caliber of actor you'd see in Manhattan, at a fraction of the cost, with a drink in hand at intermission. Ellenville's Canal Street has grown up around the theater, with farm-to-table restaurants, galleries, and antique shops close enough to walk to before or after a show, so a Shadowland night out tends to turn into a full evening.