Page 6 - BusinessWest November 24, 2025

From left: Todd Kadis, Sue Dziura, Tery LaCasse, and Danny
Eaton in a ‘mug’ shot.
Staff Photo
Eaton said he had to correct him to a degree and note that get-
ting the doors open wasn’t the dream, or the hard part, or the end
of the story. Keeping them open was, and is, the dream. And the
hard part as well.
And nothing has really changed in that regard over the past
three decades, he said, adding that the overriding mission can be
boiled down to those four words: keeping the doors open.
Actually, there’s much more to it than that, said Todd Kadis, the
Majestic’s treasurer, who has also been here from the beginning.
Indeed, the overriding goals are to make theater accessi-
ble and affordable (tickets are under $40), he said, and also
to draw people who might not otherwise attend theater.
“We’ve always seen new people, first-timers, coming to
the theater, based upon the offerings,” he explained, adding
that most of these first-timers will return, and many of them
will become subscribers.
It all started, as noted, with The Buddy Holly Story,
which returns every five years at the Majestic. Actually, our
story really begins in 1992 with the creation of the Theater
Project, which performed shows at the Church of the Good
Shepherd, just down the street from its current home, to
raise money to open the Majestic’s doors.
Or new doors, to be precise, because the current front
entrance still led to the deli, so a new entrance had to be
built in the back of the structure.
“We spent summers hammering nails and lugging con-
crete blocks,” Eaton recalled, adding that the team put in
two and half years of sweat equity to get the theater ready
for prime time. And that hard work essentially set the tone
for all that has happened since.
Over the years, the Majestic has added more framed play-
bills to the walls — to the point where there’s no remaining
room; raffled off 29 vintage cars; transformed its café into
a gathering spot, with patrons showing up an hour or more before
a show starts for a quick meal and a beverage; maintained its core
audience while attracting new patrons; and become one of the cor-
nerstones for growth and new businesses in the Elm Street area.
Very little, if anything, has been easy, said those we spoke with,
but the Majestic has persevered through hard work, imagination (in
all its forms), and the ability to stay engaged with its audience.
All these traits were on display during the pandemic, when the
lights went down, literally, on March 21, 2020, and didn’t go back
on again until August 2021, when the Majestic picked up right
where it left off.
Kadis said the institution was kept afloat by PPP and also a
much-needed Shuttered Venues Operating Grant, a federal pro-
“Danny has
programmed it
so that there’s
something for
everyone — a
comedy and
a drama and
sometimes a
whodunit.”
6 << FEATURE >>
NOVEMBER 24, 2025
Business W est