The beginning of the Theater program Grand Rapids Community College dates back to 1967. A student in Language Arts instructor Walt Lockwood's Creative Writing class, Joe Dionne, wrote an absurdist one-act play called, A Breakfast of Oranges and Blue Shade. A group of students approached Fred Sebulske, then in his first year of teaching at the college, to help bring the play to a stage. With Fred's direction, the play was performed for one night only at St. Cecilia Music Center. Students involved in this first production and others convinced Sebulske and associate instructor Karin Orr to continue producing plays as an extra-curricular activity. Thus, the Language Arts Division was persuaded to add course to the Speech Curriculum: Introduction to Acting. For several years, this single acting course and a one play per semester comprised the Theater program at GRCC.
Currently, the Theater program at GRCC is housed at Spectrum Theater and offers over 10 courses! The Theater program is directed by Tom Kaechele, with Jonathan Wheeler as Theater Manager, and Cole Szeszulski as Technical Director.
Among the plays produced during its fifty plus-year history are: JB, Our Town, Playboy of the Western World, The Glass Menagerie, Spoon River Anthology, The Birthday Party, A Doll's House, The Rimers of Eldritch and, more recently, God's Country, Fires in the Mirror, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Seagull, The Foreigner, The Elephant Man, The Lion in Winter, Crimes of the Heart, and Noises Off, The Dining Room, Detroit ’67, Anton in Show Business, She Kills Monsters, Welcome to Arroyo’s, Eurydice, and Lobby Hero.
A growing number of GRCC theater alumni can be found working in every aspect of the theater industry across the country, including on Broadway.