Savannah Theatre

The curtain has been rising on this exact spot since before most of America had ever seen a proper stage.

The Savannah Theatre opened its doors on December 4th, 1818... designed by William Jay, the same British architect who gave this city the Owens-Thomas House.

It's the oldest continuously operating theatre site in the entire country. The same corner of Chippewa Square, for over two hundred years, through wars, fires, and every kind of performance you can imagine.

Vaudeville.

Silent film.

Broadway revues.

This building has never gone dark for long.

But continuously operating doesn't mean untouched.

This theatre has burned twice.

The first fire came in 1827, not even a decade after opening night. The building itself survived, but the flames took lives that night... patrons caught in the smoke and confusion.

According to a story passed down through generations of performers, an actress died in that fire as well.

Her name, they say, was Betty.

Then, in 1948, a second fire nearly finished what the first one started, gutting the building almost completely.

What you're looking at today... that clean Art Deco face on the theatre... is what rose from those ashes.

Two fires.

Two centuries of performers pouring themselves onto that stage, night after night, for audiences who came and went and were eventually forgotten.

Except, they say, by the ones who never quite left.

Staff and performers here speak of at least three spirits who have made this theatre their permanent engagement.

Betty, the actress said to have been lost in the first fire, is reported most often on opening nights... a shape glimpsed onstage in the darkness, or peering from behind the curtain just as the house lights go down, as though she still can't resist watching the show begin.

There's also a young boy the crew has nicknamed Ben.

He has reportedly been seen in the balcony, tugging at spotlight technicians and offering to help work the lights. At other times, he is blamed for small tricks played on the audience below... including a tap on the shoulder that leaves no one standing there when the person turns around.

A third presence is said to be older and more reserved... possibly a former director of the theatre, still keeping watch over a building he never stopped loving.

Cast and crew have described cold drafts crossing the stage with no apparent source.

Footsteps pace the balcony when the theatre is empty and locked.

Props change position overnight.

Whispered conversations drift from vacant dressing rooms.

Actors will tell you that theatres are always a little haunted.

Every stage carries the weight of everyone who ever stood upon it and gave an audience everything they had.

This one has simply been collecting those performances longer than almost any stage in America.

The show, as they say, must go on.

At the Savannah Theatre... it seems some members of the cast agree, and have simply never taken their final bow.