The Factory Theatre at Greenville University produces live theatre, performance art, and comedy for and with the community of Greenville, Illinois.
The Factory Theatre, an intimate studio setting, has a fascinating history. It is housed in what was originally four businesses. The Greenville Steam Laundry picked up and delivered in a horse-drawn laundry cart. The Hygienic Ice Company and the Hygienic Dairy and Ice Cream Company were flourishing businesses before electric refrigeration. Refrigeration cars on the Pennsylvania Railroad adjacent to the now-existing Factory Theatre were switched onto the siding south of the factory and loaded with ice.
The Model Glove Company manufactured and sold about 100 varieties of styles, weights, and sizes of work gloves for men, women, and children. Their customers were largely wholesale paper, hardware, grocery, dry goods and large mail order houses throughout the United States. Among them are J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Sears Roebuck and Company, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company, Campbell Soup, and Rice-Stix Dry Goods. Gloves were manufactured in the building from 1907 to 1960.
In 1970 Greenville College took occupancy, and in 1973 the newly-dubbed Factory Theatre produced its first play there, David Mellick's The Wall. The show was produced for an audience of sixty people in folding chairs, and was lighted with one-gallon vegetable cans fashioned into stage lights.
Almost forty years later the Factory Theatre currently performs plays for almost 3,000 patrons each year with a season of up to six plays. It is staffed by theatre majors, and has well-equipped scene, properties, and costume shops, and state-of-the-art lighting and sound equipment. Now, rather than making work gloves, the sewing machines in the costume shop create colorful dresses, hats, and capes.
The Theatre Program at Greenville College strives to prepare students in the art and craft of theatre, develop creativity and imagination, increase understanding of the human condition, and help students to articulate the role of theatre from a Christian worldview.
