After the Final Curtain: The Elmora Theatre opened on February 15, 1927 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It was called “The Theatre Beautiful” in early advertisements and was primarily a live playhouse when it opened. The Kirkham Players, a local acting company, performed in most of the plays shown at the Elmora. However, on June 11, 1928, a little over a year after they began, J. Ellis Kirkham, the managing director of the Kirkham Players, resigned because of a difference of opinion on managerial policy. Kirkham’s resignation led to a much less popular group taking over the Elmora, and by 1929 it had closed.
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The Elmora Theatre looks like such a sweet, wholesome performance space. My twin sister goes to Emerson, and the school purchased the Majestic and Paramount theaters decades ago. The school restored the interior designs and installed some state of the art technology. Emerson rents out the Paramount to Broadway tours and uses the Majestic for student performances. While the Rauh and the Chosky are great performance spaces, they lack the character and soul these older theaters have. It probably is not going to happen, but Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts could purchase the Elmora to follow what Emerson did. Even though the school is a 30 minute drive from the theater, the space could also be rented out. If Mason Gross won’t buy the theater, I hope the local government makes the decision to declare the Elmora as a historic building and restore it to its previous state of beauty.
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