The Heart of Memphis Performing Arts

By Jamie Markham

02/23/2025

It is tech week at Theatre Memphis. Beauty and the Beast, a once-in-a-lifetime show, is entering the final days of production before the sold-out show opens its doors to the public. Even at 9 o'clock on a Sunday, the workshop resounds with the noise of power tools. Actors are packing up, worn from several hours of singing, dancing, and practicing what needs to be a perfect performance.

 

In the audience, a single woman takes notes on what needs to be done before Thursday. “If I Can’t Love Her”, the hot song that defined the show’s climax, it needed to be brighter. It wasn’t just that, no. The actors needed more eyeliner to make their eyes stand out from the back. The ensemble slagged behind the tempo.

 

Theatre Memphis will be running their production of “Beauty and the Beast” from February 28th to March 30th.

 

These notes are but a few of the nitpicked details that Beauty and the Beast needed to improve upon. Debbie Litch, the executive director of Theatre Memphis, was given a golden opportunity. Theatre Memphis would be the last theatre across the nation to perform this show for more than a decade.

 

Two days after Theatre Memphis secured the rights for Beauty, Disney pulled them off the market. In 2026, Beauty and the Beast would be on Broadway and then tour across the nation. Even in Memphis, the Broadway tour would visit the Orpheum. Despite lacking Broadway level professional funding, a stroke of luck like this guaranteed that every seat in Theatre Memphis would sell out. The standards and expectations were high, but for the oldest community theatre in the country; it was another honor added to a long line of prestigious and celebrated shows that Litch would oversee.

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This will be Litch’s 25th year associated with Theatre Memphis. After four years of organizing shows alongside the theatre’s executive board, Litch was chosen to be the face, leader, and organizer behind Theatre Memphis. Many financial and business firms would try to call this role the “Chief Executive Officer”, the C.E.O. – but for the world of performing arts, they simply call Litch the “Executive Producer.”

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As the oldest community theatre in the country, Litch knows there is a high standard of excellence in their works. However, how does a community theatre manage to achieve such high standards of excellence when majority of the crew and staff are volunteers?

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Litch believes the answer to excellence comes through the community alone. “When people come onto our stage, we want our audience to see Memphis in them,” said Litch.

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This emphasis on community applies to almost all their ventures and missions. When selecting a show, Litch spends a few sleepless nights thinking everything through. “We want to keep it balanced; it’s not rocket science – but we want to make sure that people will want to come back.”

 

 

Even when it comes to auditions and roles, the desire to see a returning face is important to Litch. If every show has limited positions, someone is obviously not going to make the cut. Litch’s vision of having a balanced set of shows between musicals and straight plays allows for someone who didn’t make the cut to come back and try again… and that doesn’t just apply to acting.

 

When Litch was in high school, she was required to work backstage and through technical developments before she was allowed to sing on stage. “My mentor wanted to make sure that I appreciated every single part of a production,” said Litch. “This is one of the reasons why I feel that Theatre Memphis has the standard it does. Everyone who comes in feels valued in everything they do.”

 

Litch’s desire to see the behind-the-scenes individuals feel valuable in everything they do was expanded upon by the foundation of Theatre Memphis’ Tech Academy, where the organization hosts monthly classes for free that teach children how to work the technical elements of theatre.

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Community is King – Litch can’t stress this idea enough. Where other organizations struggle to fund their Volunteer Engagement and Outreach department, Litch demands that Theatre Memphis keeps the city intertwined with the theatre’s mission in a million different ways. Last year, Theatre Memphis hosted the city’s Children’s Festival and when planning the event, Litch wanted to embrace all elements of the community.

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Even in a diverse and open community like Memphis, certain groups like “Ekpe Abioto” and “Nubian Sirens” will struggle to get a brief glimpse of the limelight. These two groups are a few examples of traditional African performing arts groups that barely get any showcase amongst the city’s festivals and expos.

 

When it came to the organization of the Children’s festival, Debbie Litch went to the head of their outreach division, Becky Caspersen, and wanted to figure out how they could make sure these marginalized and undervalued groups could be showcased at the festival.

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While the term “DEI” as become a politicized statement in the recent years, Litch has kept Theatre Memphis’ mission statement simple for nearly a decade – the ABCs of Theatre Memphis – Accessibility. Becoming. Community. “We hope in everything we are doing, we hope it represents our entire diverse, rich community,” said Litch.

 

Litch believes that the ABCs of Theatre Memphis has kept a constant flow of individuals who want to actively partake in their community – and she’d be right. In 2024 alone, Theatre Memphis had a record number of both attendees for performances and individuals auditioning for different shows.

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When theatres fell and died through the COVID-19 Pandemic, Litch saw an opportunity to bring Theatre back stronger than ever before in Memphis. When quarantine forced the doors closed, the world itself was silent and unwelcoming. For a performing arts group, that is a fatal wound.

 

Different performing arts groups struggled to bring attendance to their works and relied almost entirely on their outreach missions. For example, Opera Memphis ended up bringing live performances outside across different neighborhoods in the city while Hattiloo Theatre produced videos of their productions.

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Theatre Memphis’ renovations started before the pandemic, but the pandemic gave them the opportunity to expand upon the project far greater. The grand central staircase is one of the new renovations added to the community theatre.

 

While Theatre Memphis had limited showings and video production of their yearly “A Christmas Carol” available for sale, Theatre Memphis had to tip-toe that first year in terms of what they could produce. However, the lack of constant audiences flowing in meant that for the first time since the 1970’s, Theatre Memphis was empty.

 

Litch, ever since 2001, has kept a dream project close to her heart that the COVID-19 Pandemic was able to see fulfilled. One of the main goals Litch planned for years was a full-scale renovation of the Theatre in every form. No stone of the building went untouched and before August 2020, the Theatre saw a completely new interior, stage and backstage renovations, and new entrances to the building.

 

“This was a dream project that we wanted to see done for years,” said Litch. “One of the main goals we wanted was for people to have a complete experience when they come in here and I think we did just that.”