Arizona's oldest arts organization built its newest ideas a black box. The Hormel Theatre at 1825 North Central Avenue is the flexible second stage of the Phoenix Theatre Company, opened in October 2013 as the centerpiece of one of the most significant performing arts expansions in the Southwest - a project that added a soaring glass atrium lobby, rehearsal halls and entertainment spaces to the company's Central Arts District campus. The parent institution's pedigree is remarkable: founded as the Phoenix Players in 1920, the company is the oldest arts organization in Arizona and among the oldest continuously operating theatres west of the Mississippi, performing since the Heard family lent its coach house in 1924. The Hormel seats roughly 250 in a state-of-the-art black box configuration - a room built to be rebuilt, where seating, stage and sightlines reshape for each production. The programming leans into what the format allows: intimate musicals, new works, regional premieres and the company's Festival of New American Theatre, which uses the room as its development laboratory. The theatre shares the campus with the 112-seat Judith Hardes Theatre and, since 2025, the 500-seat Stephenson Theatre - a three-stage ladder that lets Arizona's largest professional regional company scale productions to their natural size. Every show is built in-house - sets, costumes and production by the company's own artisans - part of an operation running more than 600 performances a year alongside outreach programs like Partners That Heal. A century-old company producing new American work in a decade-old room: the Hormel is where the state's oldest arts institution does its newest thinking. The 2013 expansion that created the room also rebuilt the company's public face - the glass atrium lobby turned the campus inward-facing arts complex into a Central Avenue landmark - and the Hormel's flexible floor has since hosted everything from immersive stagings to cabaret seasons that the company's proscenium houses could never hold.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 1825 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ, United States, 85004

Website: https://phoenixtheatre.com

Capacity: 250

Opening Date: 01/10/2013

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