Welcome to the historic Howmet Playhouse, a City of Whitehall project. Our ninety-three year old Playhouse, located two blocks off the main street of a traditional downtown, has been presenting fine arts and entertainment to the greater West Michigan area since 1916. Whether you’re a first time visitor or you’ve been a season ticket holder for years, we’re happy to have you at the Playhouse!

After a tremendously busy winter and spring, we’re ready to kick off our extended summer season line-up! The Howmet Playhouse Summer Theatre Festival 2009 premiers July 2 - 4, with both local and out-of-state professional actors featured in the abstract comedies of David Ives, All in the Timing. All shows this season will run Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, with showtime at 7:30 pm. As usual, our endowed actors in residence will provide West Michigan with a brand new production every week, but this year, our Festival will run for a full nine weeks, every weekend in the months of July and August! Playhouse audiences will have the chance to experience nine very different opportunities of summer fare entertainment. We’re taking a light-hearted approach to our summer on White Lake the Beautiful, offering hilarious comedies from adaptors such as Steve Martin in the July 23 - 25 production of The Underpants, and sketch comedy and improvisational family fun from Chicago’s Windy City, Pretend Soup, which runs August 20 - 22. The Playhouse stage will see the well-known story of Driving Miss Daisy from July 16 - 18, brought in by our new friends at Grand Rapids Master Arts Theatre. Tom Harryman and Jeremy Meier will return to the stage for a summer thriller and ghost play, The Woman in Black, which also features a talented and upcoming Whitehall actress, Brianna Clark. With familiar faces onstage and new talent to boot, we feel confident that this will be a wildly enjoyable and successful season!

We’re thrilled to see the return of many other past Playhouse performers as well, such as Bill Iddings, Jeff Sanders, Sara Goff, Michael Bradley, Nicholas Dressel, Andrea Matthews, Andrew Zahrt and many more! We’re also honored to benefit from the talents of Muskegon director Mike Vogas in our all local show August 13 - 15, featuring the incredibly gifted actors, Kim Harsch and Joe Carmolli. Jeremy Meier will direct the poignant and beautiful love story, Almost, Maine, for the weekend of August 6 - 8, featuring brand new actresses from across the nation.

The White Lake Youth Theatre will share a Shawnee tribal tale, The Legend of Scarface and Bluewater, on July 30, 31, and August 1. Playhouse Youth Theatre programming continues to grow stronger as we offer more educational outreach opportunities. Our spring break Performing Arts Day Camp was a huge success, and we hope to hold another session over Christmas Break. Please check back with our new Youth Theatre page for more information as the time approaches.

This summer we’ll be featuring several local restaurants throughout the season, offering sweet treats and snacks during intermission as always. We are also teaming up with some of them to create summer packages for dinner and a show. Check out the Promotions page to learn more.

When you are planning for the performances you would like to attend, don't forget about our flexible summer season passes, the Full Flex Pass and the Mini Flex Pass. See our Tickets page for more information.

In these difficult times, it is more important than ever to support the arts and humanities that bring so much joy into our lives. We will continue to bring you a vast array of fine arts events, and we hope that you will carry on with the exceptional support that we have come to expect and appreciate from the White Lake area and our many other neighboring communities.

Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing you at the Playhouse!

Best wishes,

Cindy Beth Davis,
Playhouse Manager