Hyde Park Theatre

Currently the oldest surviving independent theatre space in Austin, Hyde Park Theatre was an abandoned post office when local theatre legend Linalice Carey decided to convert it into a storefront stage in 1982. From the beginning, this intimate space – 75 seats, none of them more than 20 feet from the action – has been a home for Central Texas playwrights to premiere new works and daring directors to experiment. It's a chamber space featuring serious work by serious artists, despite its awkward L-shaped auditorium and low ceiling. Since the turn of the century, it's been run by longtime (and relentlessly award-winning) director Ken Webster, who regularly stages the best of what's contemporary by American, Canadian, and Irish dramatists with some of the best theatre artists this city has. Also home to the annual performance jamboree FronteraFest (mid-January to mid-February), where more original work is performed in a month's time than most theatre cities see in a year.