ACT Children's Theater began as the St. John's Conservatory Theater in 2014. After the original theater was dissolved due to some turbulent times, three of the original members met to see what the future could hold. They had it in their hearts that there needed to be a children's theater in their area to continue to provide artistic outlets for local area youth because those opportunities were hard to come by in the North Country of New York. Those three founders were Angela Dwyer, Christopher Dwyer, and Tonya Ott, and thus A.C.T. was born!

The three original founders quickly recruited the talents of Stephan Chambers, a local artist and founding member of the St. John's Conservatory Theater. With their creative team in place, ACT decided to do a musical theater summer camp for students of all grades in August of 2019. Using Mary Poppins as the basis, a half-hour show was performed in a local park for members of the community, and it was loved by all who came to see it! ACT then decided to do a Broadway showcase as a way to slowly begin their new theater. With over 200 people in attendance, that beginning was anything but slow! With so much community support, the future was looking good…until the spring of 2020 came.

ACT was ready to put on a full stage production of The Music Man, when the COVID pandemic brought everything to a halt. That production was postponed to an unknown date and the theater lay quiet. However, by August 2020, ACT was ready to keep going. Following strict COVID guidelines, they held a summer acting camp and had nearly 30 students participate. They were also able to present a fully virtual Broadway showcase in the fall of 2020, entitled Modern Classics, and a fully virtual stage play in the spring of 2021, entitled Arthur Redux by Greg Ellstrom. Both productions were very well-received by the local community and beyond!

Once COVID restrictions began to subside, it was time to start holding live performances once again. We began our 2021-2022 season with a stage play for elementary students entitled The Enchanted Bookshop. That was held upstairs at St. John's with full restrictions of capacity, social distancing, and mask-wearing in place, but was a huge success. We then began our first full Broadway musical production as ACT Children's Theater. Seussical featured a huge cast of students in grades 1 through college freshmen and was a massive success, with rave reviews from the community. We knew then that ACT Children's Theater was here to stay. 

During that time, we added the incredible talents of Deby Wells to our mix. Her eye for costumes and prop/set design has really helped our shows to just pop off that stage. Our 2022-2023 season featured a stage play for elementary students once again, this time called Monster in the Closet. To complete another first, we put this show on for the combined audience of both elementary schools in Ogdensburg, for a total of about 800 people! The nighttime performances went well also. We then put together a musical just for middle and high school students called Anything Goes! This show was wo much fun to put on and really wowed the audience.

As that season came to a close, we had a serious meeting about the future of ACT Children's Theater. We all agreed that, to see the theater continue to grow, we needed to strike out on our own. While we are extremely grateful for everything that St. John's Church gave and did for us, we are ready to begin a new chapter as our own nonprofit. That is how ACT Children's Theater, Inc. was born! We are excited about moving into our own new space and continuing to put on great shows to wow the North Country. We greet each new season with enthusiasm and bit of insanity and we are ready for what comes next!