The Little Theatre of Chattanooga was founded in 1923 by directors Reverend John D. Wing, Heloise Schwartz, Miriam Hines Thatcher, John E. Gilbreath, and J.J. Mahoney, and president Elise Young Chapin. After their first production in 1924, Dear Me, the company continued to produce nonprofit community theater for Chattanooga, Tennessee audiences young and old. In the late 1920s, the theater introduced children’s plays, which grew into a full youth theater program in the early 1980s. In the early 1970s, the theater began casting Black actors, adding plays centered on the Black experience in the 1980s. The works range from musicals to dramas to comedies to tragedies and beyond. The original theater, an abandoned fire station located at 8th Street and Park Avenue, lasted from 1926 until the Little Theatre of Chattanooga moved to Riverside Drive in 1962. Along with the move to the Riverside Drive location in 1996, The Little Theatre of Chattanooga changed its name to the Chattanooga Theatre Center.

Gustrowsky, Kelly. “History.” Chattanooga Theatre Centre, 2020. Accessed January 11, 2024. https://theatrecentre.com/about/history/.