4 Best Performing Arts in Cape Cod, Massachusetts

For Broadway-style dramas, comedies, and musicals, attend a production at the Cape Playhouse, the country's oldest professional summer theater. In 1927 Raymond Moore, who had been working with a theatrical troupe in Provincetown, bought an 1838 Unitarian meetinghouse and converted it into a theater. The opening performance was The Guardsman, starring Basil Rathbone. Other stars who performed here in the early days—some in their professional stage debuts—include Bette Davis (who first worked here as an usher), Gregory Peck, Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, Tallulah Bankhead, and Henry Fonda, who appeared with his then-unknown 20-year-old daughter, Jane. Mainstage productions run from June to September and they offer children's programming in July and August. The playhouse is situated on the property of the Cape Cod Center for the Arts in Dennis Village. The campus also includes the Cape Cod Museum of Art, the Cape Cinema, and a restaurant.

Several impressive productions, from original works to the classics, are staged every year in this indoor Arts and Crafts–style theater set way back in the woods. There are popular outdoor shows for kids offered on weekday mornings during the summer, as well as puppet shows.

This year-round venue provides excellent theater, showcasing many new works, as well as more unusual fare. In addition, they host dance performances, readings by playwrights, and workshops.

The well-regarded Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater continues its tradition, since 1985, of producing provocative, often edgy, world premieres of American plays, satires, farces, and black comedies in its mid-May–late-September season. In July and August there are productions aimed for kids, held under a white tent. From October to April, opera lovers can watch performances from the Met, live in HD.