SERVICES > Governor's Arts Awards > 2012 GAA Award Winners
2012 GAA Organizational Achievement Award
Blue Barn Theatre (Omaha)
The Blue Barn Theatre exists to enhance the cultural life of Omaha, Nebraska and surrounding communities by producing professionally-executed, boundary-breaking plays that ignite a passion for live theatre. Blue Barn is dedicated to theatre's most important tradition: to provoke thought, emotion, action, and change.
The Blue Barn Theatre began in 1989 with graduates from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at the State University of New York at Purchase. Seeking to create theatre in the Midwest with the deeply shared artistic aesthetic that they had developed during their professional training, Blue Barn’s founders joined forces with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and produced their first play: America in Pieces. The response to the work was overwhelming, and the Blue Barn was born.
By 1991, the Blue Barn was growing fast, adding new core members from a variety of backgrounds who all shared a commitment to the Blue Barn’s original vision: a collective of highly trained artists working together to create theatre without boundaries. In 1998, the Tenth Anniversary Season, the Blue Barn moved into its current home, a beautiful 86-seat proscenium arch theatre in Omaha’s historic Old Market district.
Now in its twenty-third season, the Blue Barn has produced over eighty plays including many regional and world premieres, and has received over fifty awards from the Theatre Arts Guild and the Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards. Each new season's repertoire offers a selection of contemporary plays, carefully chosen to stimulate the mind, touch the heart, and entertain the spirit. Award winning work by some of America's most renowned playwrights including Edward Albee, John Guare, Tennessee Williams, Tracy Letts, David Lindsay-Abaire, and Paula Vogel can frequently be seen on the Blue Barn stage.
Exceptional casting brings together professional actors and the best local talent, creating an environment where professional and community artists unite to ignite a passion for live theater.
The Blue Barn also fosters The Witching Hour, Omaha’s only late-night theatre experience. This collective of young actors and designers create original ensemble theatre pieces on the sets used for Blue Barn productions, and perform them in the late evening hours following Blue Barn shows.
In May 2011, the Blue Barn Theatre began an educational partnership with Ollie Webb Center, Inc. in conjunction with their "Art of Imagination" program. "Art of Imagination" provides visual and performing arts programming for Ollie Webb's developmentally disabled adult students, and Blue Barn is now the permanent home for music and theatre classes held throughout the year. A joint theatre production involving "Art of Imagination" students and Blue Barn actors and technical staff is being planned for fall 2012.
The city of Omaha and state of Nebraska have a thriving cultural scene, and the Blue Barn Theatre continues to be an important piece of that urban fabric. The foundation of the Blue Barn was born in New York, has grown up in Nebraska, and is firmly rooted in artistic excellence.
