Boise Contemporary Theater

BCT Founder and Artistic Director Matthew Cameron Clark began producing theater in Boise, Idaho in 1996. In November of that year, along with actors he had met the previous summer working for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, he co-produced and performed in Lone Star by James McLure in the basement of The Mode Building in Downtown Boise. When Matthew saw that there was an audience for professional contemporary theater in his home town, Boise Contemporary Theater was born and four more plays in four different venues were produced: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley (Neurolux and The Flying M Coffeehouse), All in the Timing by David Ives (Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy), the World Premiere of Drive Me by Maria Dahvana Headley (Baccus Cabaret) and Lonely Planet by Steven Dietz (Stage II of The Morrison Center). Lonely Planet, in the spring of 1999, marked the first production for BCT as an official Non-Profit Organization.

Boise Contemporary Theater began a capital campaign in 1999 to renovate a permanent home. Formally a seedhouse built in 1935, by October 2000, it had been transformed into a theater facility with a main-stage, classrooms, rehearsal loft and office space. The capital campaign ultimately raised $2.6 million.

On October 12, 2000, BCT premiered its first production in a newly renovated theater on Fulton street in the heart of Boise's Cultural District: Steve Martin’s Picasso At The Lapin Agile, directed by Artistic Director and Founder Matthew Cameron Clark. The season would go on to include True West by Sam Shepard and The Cripple of Inishman by Martin McDonagh.[1]

BCT has had two productions directed by filmmaker Michael Hoffman: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov [2] and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (co-directed with Matthew Cameron Clark).

In 2010, BCT was awarded the American Theatre Wing's National Theatre Company Grant.[3]

In 2019, founding artistic director Matthew Cameron Clark was fired by the Board of Trustees for insubordination.[4]

BCT is located in the heart of Boise's Cultural District at 854 Fulton Street.

Its Main-Stage is a black box theater, with 230 seats in nine rows. The seats in the theater were donated by The Egyptian Theatre when they went through their latest renovation. The chandeliers in the main hall as you enter the theater are on permanent loan from the Idaho State Historical Society and were once housed, at the turn of the last century, at the Pinney Theater once located on Main Street between 9th and 10th Streets.

Boise Contemporary Theater is governed by a twenty-member Board of Trustees and managed by five permanent staff members.

BCT has also raised money through several red carpet advance screening events in Boise. The Bourne Identity,[5] The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum.[6] had advance screenings in Boise at The Egyptian Theatre as a benefit for Boise Contemporary Theater. Producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy and actor Matt Damon were present at each event, raising thousands of dollars for the theater, and enabling it in 2007 to have its first profitable season ever.[6]

On December 10, 2008, producers Marshall and Kennedy returned to present an advance screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to benefit Boise Contemporary Theater.[7]

• Boise Contemporary Theater
• Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Profile