Mid City Civic Theatre Begins New Era with "Dear Evan Hansen"

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Running now through Sept. 20

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Before Mid City Civic Theatre had a new name, a new season or even a clear picture of its future, 75 people showed up to clean the building.

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For founding member and Vice President Caty LeJeune, that turnout was evidence that the longtime theater space still mattered to Baton Rouge. Volunteers hauled trash, mopped floors and helped prepare a building many of them already associated with years of performance and memories.

“Everybody loves that space,” LeJeune said. “Everybody has a memory of seeing a show in that space or being in that space, and it’s really been overwhelming and beautiful.”

That community response has helped shape Mid City Civic Theatre, the organization created from the remains of the former Theatre Baton Rouge. Rather than simply replacing the name on the building, its new leadership has spent the past year reconsidering what a community theater can be through preserving 90 years of history while creating a more sustainable organization built around collaboration, accessibility and shared space. This month, that new chapter continues with the theater’s first musical, DEAR EVAN HANSEN, running now through Sept. 20.

LeJeune said she first learned that Theatre Baton Rouge was closing while sitting in an accounting class as she completed her MBA at Southeastern Louisiana University. She saw the announcement on Facebook and soon found her phone filled with messages.

“Shock is probably the best,” she said of the initial reaction, describing a mixture of confusion and disappointment among people who had formed friendships and connections through the theater.

Those conversations eventually brought LeJeune together with Joe Carleton and Shannon Walsh, along with other community members, to consider what could come next. Rather than create an entirely separate nonprofit, the group ultimately decided to retain the former theater’s nonprofit entity and its history while installing new leadership and developing a new vision for the organization.

LeJeune compared the transformation to a phoenix.

“You burn it all down and take what you can and rise up to create something new,” she said.

That rebuilding process extended beyond programming. The new leadership rewrote bylaws, revisited the theater’s mission and considered how the building could serve organizations beyond Mid City Civic Theatre’s own productions.

​“We really want to focus on the community aspect of it,” LeJeune said.

That means leaving operations in the calendar for other groups to rent the stage, providing rehearsal space when possible and making the building available for arts organizations that do not have permanent facilities of their own. Mid City Civic Theatre has already worked with groups including Louisiana Youth Theatre and Red Magnolia Theatre Company, while also making the facility available for meetings, events and private rentals.

​The approach also addresses one of the most persistent challenges facing community theaters: money.

​LeJeune said rising production costs and changes in the post-pandemic economy have made the traditional model of using ticket sales from one production to finance the next increasingly difficult. Rentals and partnerships can provide additional revenue without requiring the theater to continually produce shows simply to keep money coming through the door.

​But preserving community theater itself remains central to the organization’s identity.

​LeJeune said a production can bring together high school and college students, working adults and people from different parts of the region who otherwise might never meet.

​“It’s just people from different parts of…times in their own lives, different areas of the city that you would have never necessarily crossed paths with getting to come together and make theater and do something that we love,” she said.

​Mid City Civic Theater mounted its first production in June, followed this month by DEAR EVAN HANSEN.

The Tony-Award-winning musical follows Evan Hansen, a socially anxious teenager whose life changes after a misunderstanding grows into an increasingly complicated deception. The show examines loneliness, identity, grief, family relationships, social media and the desire to be accepted.

LeJeune said its themes made the show feel particularly appropriate for Mid City Civic Theater’s first musical.

​“The music in ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ is stunning,” she said. “It’s an important story to be told right now.”

The musical’s focus on isolation and connection also reflects the larger mission Mid City Civic Theatre is trying to establish.

“A lot of the show is Evan finding…a community he didn’t think he would ever have,” LeJeune said. “And that’s, I think, something that you can get in theater, whether you’re a performer onstage or volunteering backstage or even just sitting in the audience. You are part of the Mid City Civic community.”

The production is directed by Lily McGill, with music direction by Jonathan Thomas and Rebecca Smith serving as assistant director.

Xavier Haynes leads the cast as Evan Hansen, with Marion Mayfield as Heidi Hansen, Cameron Augustine as Zoe Murphy, Coy Lyles as Connor Murphy, Natalie Overall as Cynthia Murphy and Chase Duhe as Larry Murphy. Anthony Burton Jr. plays Jared Kleinman and Molly Donahue plays Alana Beck.

LeJeune said the theater wanted to cast younger performers who could bring their own understanding of the characters’ experiences to the production.

“Our goal was to be able to cast it with actual high school students or fresh college kids that really could relate to how these characters are feeling because they’re in it,” she said. “It would bring a little bit more authenticity.”

​That choice has also helped bring younger audiences into the theater.

LeJeune said Mid City Civic Theater has seen an increase in student ticket sales, including teenagers attending because classmates or friends are in the production. For some, she said, DEAR EVAN HANSEN may be their first experience seeing a musical live.

​“It’s just starting a whole new cycle of supporters and fans and people that we’ll get to see in the space,” she said.

​The theater hopes that sense of welcome extends to longtime patrons as well.

For people who remember Baton Rouge Little Theater or Theatre Baton Rouge, LeJeune said much of the physical experience remains familiar, including the 300-seat auditorium with its signature red seats. For those entering the building for the first time, the goal is equally simple: make them feel that they belong there.

Mid City Civic Theatre’s stated mission is to create a welcoming and accessible home where longtime performers and first-time audience members can participate in live theater and where local artists can collaborate with the broader Baton Rouge community.

Now, as the organization approaches its first anniversary, LeJeune said its leaders are already planning a second year; something that once seemed far from certain.

​“If you’d have told me, you know, a year ago, six months ago, we’d be planning for year two, I would have just been like, ‘Nah, you’re not there,’” she said.​

After a difficult year for arts organizations and nonprofits, LeJeune said reaching that point has provided its own reassurance.

“We’re ready for that. We’re here,” she said. “It just kind of goes to show you what the support has been for the last year.”​

DEAR EVAN HANSEN runs through Sept. 20 at Mid City Civic Theatre, 7155 Florida Blvd. in Baton Rouge. Tickets can be purchased at midcitycivic.org.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/new-orleans/article/Mid-City-Civic-Theatre-builds-a-new-chapter-with-Dear-Evan-Hansen-20260918)._