The History of Apple Hill Playhouse: From Farm Barn to 'Best Little Theatre'
For more than sixty years, people in Westmoreland County drove up Manor Road in Delmont to watch plays in a barn. Apple Hill Playhouse was never a large theatre, but it had a long life, a loyal audience and a habit of attempting shows that bigger venues might have avoided. This article traces the history of Apple Hill Playhouse, from its beginnings on an old farm to its closure in 2020 and the company that carries its name today.
A pre-Civil War barn on the Martz Farm
The building that became Apple Hill Playhouse began life as a farm barn. It stood on land that was part of the Martz Farm and dated from before the Civil War. By the middle of the twentieth century, barns like it were being turned into summer theatres across the eastern United States, and the Delmont barn followed the same path.
The first person to make it a theatre was Gerta Bendl, who established a performance space there around 1956. Her papers, now held by a university library in Kentucky, cover the years from 1957 to 1987, which gives a sense of how long her connection with the stage lasted. The barn's rough timber, sloping ground and rural setting became part of the experience for audiences, and remained so to the end.
From the William Penn Theater to Apple Hill
The barn did not become Apple Hill Playhouse straight away. A group linked to the Pittsburgh Playhouse, led by Bill Loucks, expanded the building and ran it as the William Penn Theater. The larger stage and seating made it possible to present fuller productions and draw audiences from Greensburg, Murrysville and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
In 1964 the theatre changed hands again. Three theatre practitioners associated with Mountain Playhouse, the long-running summer theatre in Jennerstown, bought the building and gave it the name that stuck: Apple Hill Playhouse. Their opening production was a one-woman show starring the comedian Totie Fields, an early sign that the little barn could attract recognisable performers.
The Pat Beyer years
The longest chapter in the theatre's story began in 1982, when Pat Beyer bought Apple Hill Playhouse. She served as its producer and artistic director until the theatre closed, and by 2020 she was in her 38th year in charge. A 2001 newspaper review, preserved in our press archive, describes her working the concession stand on opening night of her 20th season, selling pop and answering patrons' questions. That hands-on style was typical of how the barn was run.
Under Beyer, Apple Hill produced a summer season that usually ran from May into October, and sometimes later. The line-ups mixed comedies, dramas and musicals. Surviving listings include Neil Simon plays such as Proposals, Fools and The Prisoner of Second Avenue; musicals such as Grease, Evita, Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha and Sweet Charity; and contemporary plays like Rabbit Hole and Suite Surrender. In 2007 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette singled out the season finale, Crimes of the Heart, as the best amateur production of the season.
The barn itself changed over the years. By the 2010s it was air-conditioned, and the theatre added ramped access and a covered patio for patrons. The motto on its early website banner summed up how the company saw itself: "The Best Little Theatre in the Country". In 2013 a Post-Gazette feature used a similar phrase, calling it the best little theater in the suburbs.
Orchard Performing Arts Company
Much of Apple Hill's work was produced by Orchard Performing Arts Company, Inc. (OPAC), a non-profit theatre company. According to the theatre's 2003 website, OPAC had existed for about sixteen years by then, which places its founding in the late 1980s. Its mission was "to preserve and advance the traditions of live theatre through entertainment and education".
OPAC's activity reached beyond the barn. In the early 2000s it described a year that included two musicals at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg, two musicals and four dramas at Apple Hill, and one courtroom drama staged in the Westmoreland County Courthouse. The courthouse productions became a signature. Audiences sat in a working courtroom while actors performed plays such as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and, in 2011, Tom Topor's Nuts. A Pittsburgh City Paper review noted that real prisoners were being moved in the courtrooms below as the audience arrived.
You can read more about the company, its mission and its 2004 board on our About OPAC page, and about its non-profit status.
Children's theatre and education
Education was built into Apple Hill from the start. Each summer the Johnny Appleseed Children's Theatre (JACT) staged short plays for young audiences on weekday mornings: fairy tales, adaptations of classic stories and participation plays in which children in the audience helped the story along. The theatre also ran the Summerfun Theatre School, later replaced by summer theatre camps, an apprenticeship programme for teenagers and the Marietta Adams Memorial Scholarship for graduating seniors going on to study the arts.
Many local performers first stepped on stage at Apple Hill as children and returned years later as adults, directors or teachers. The cast biographies that survive in the archive show how interconnected the region's community theatres were, with the same actors appearing at Apple Hill, Greensburg Civic Theatre, New Kensington Civic Theatre and other companies. Our guide to the Johnny Appleseed Children's Theatre covers this side of the story in more detail.
Closing the barn in 2020
The 2020 season was announced as usual, with plays such as Clue: On Stage, Night Watch and Little Shop of Horrors. It never ran as planned. On 23 July 2020 Apple Hill Playhouse announced that it would close permanently.
Speaking to the Tribune-Review, Pat Beyer, then 79, pointed to her age, her health and the uncertainty facing live theatre during the coronavirus pandemic. She explained that socially distanced seating and new sanitation rules would be very hard to manage in a rough-hewn, Civil War-era barn. OPAC's president said the company was saddened but supportive, and that OPAC still existed even though it had lost its only performance venue. The barn property was sold in 2021.
What remains
The theatre company did not end with the barn. Orchard Performing Arts Company has continued to produce shows under the name Apple Hill Players. In 2022, for example, it staged Over the River and Through the Woods at the Trafford Performing Arts Centre, one of the plays that had been planned for the final 2020 season. For current productions, check the company's own announcements rather than this archive.
This website keeps the rest of the record. It includes season listings going back to 2000, newspaper reviews from 2001 to 2003, audition notices, ticket prices, dinner-theatre menus and the seasons from 2015 to 2020, which were previously hidden inside a script-driven website that search engines could not read.
Apple Hill's history is a reminder that small venues can matter a great deal to a region. For six decades a converted barn gave audiences an affordable night out, gave children their first taste of the stage and gave local actors, designers and technicians a place to learn their craft. Start exploring in the season archive.