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

Marty Stuart came home to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and brought a theatre back to life with him. The Ellis Theater at 311 Byrd Avenue opened in November 1926 as the City Theatre, a small-town movie house designed by Henry Bell Hutchinson, was renamed the Strand by 1939, and ran films into the 1950s before settling into decades as a community live venue under the Ellis name, stewarded by the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Arts Council. The transformation came when the Arts Council donated the building to Marty Stuart's Congress of Country Music, the Grammy-winning Country Music Hall of Famer's project to build a world-class museum and performance campus in his hometown. The theatre was restored as phase one, its small-room intimacy preserved while sound, lighting and backstage facilities were rebuilt to modern touring standard. The grand reopening, 8-11 December 2022, announced the ambition: Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives on Thursday, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder on Friday, Vince Gill on Saturday and the Gaither Vocal Band on Sunday. Since then the calendar has drawn names far larger than a town of 7,000 would ever otherwise see - Chris Stapleton played two fundraising nights in April 2025 - alongside bluegrass, gospel, comedy, classic-country package shows and community events. The theatre is the cornerstone of the wider Congress of Country Music campus taking shape around it in downtown Philadelphia, designed by Nashville architect Nick Dryden, which will eventually house exhibits drawn from Stuart's vast archive of country music artifacts - one of the largest private collections in existence - in partnership with institutions like Graceland and the Grammy Museum. For visitors the Ellis is an easy, characterful stop: a restored 1920s house on a courthouse-square street in east-central Mississippi, about ninety minutes from Jackson, with the Neshoba County Fair - "Mississippi's Giant House Party" - and the Choctaw resorts at Pearl River nearby. Tickets run through the theatre's own box office, and shows sell out fast in a room this size.