Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

America's third-oldest continuously operating community theatre performs on the slopes of a volcano. Diamond Head Theatre at 520 Makapuu Avenue in Honolulu traces its lineage to 28 April 1915, when a troupe called The Footlights staged Pinero's The Amazons at the old Honolulu Opera House with a cast of prominent citizens. The Footlights grew into the Honolulu Community Theatre in 1934 - mission: community service through the art of theatre - and in 1952 found a permanent home in the aging movie house of the Fort Ruger army base, a 1933 war-era cinema at the foot of Diamond Head crater retrofitted over decades with a scene shop, costume centre, lobby and lighting. The company took its current name in 1990 and earned its nickname - the Broadway of the Pacific - staging musicals and plays year-round for generations of island audiences, with alumni and guest stars threading through Hawaii's entertainment history. The old cinema, never designed for live production, was finally retired after an encore performance of Anything Goes in October 2022. Two years of construction begun in late 2020 delivered a 23-million-dollar, 17,000-square-foot theatre next door on the same property: 482 seats, the company's first-ever orchestra pit and fly loft, motorized rigging and catwalks replacing ladders, larger dressing rooms, expanded restrooms and an open-air garden entrance. It opened in January 2023 with Cinderella, funded by more than 22 million dollars in community, city and state support. A second phase continues on the Theatrical Arts Building - the surviving portion of the old structure - housing education studios, the costume centre and offices for a program that trains thousands of island performers. The location is part of the charm: minutes from Waikiki at the base of Hawaii's most famous landmark, where a century-old institution now performs in the newest purpose-built theatre in the islands - community theatre at a scale and polish few cities of any size can match.