Simply put, the Cleveland Stage Alliance was created as a matter of convenience.  In 2013, I realized that I had a bunch of friends in the theatre community, and I was having trouble keeping track of what shows they were in, and when their shows ran.  I began compiling and posting lists to Facebook of every show that I knew that was running that weekend.  People would keep adding shows to my posts, and I realized just how vast the theatre community is in Northeast Ohio.

Why hadn't I known about all these venues?  Some of them were close to my house, and I had friends involved with productions there, yet I had never heard of them?  It was then that I decided to set out and do something bigger.  I decided to create the first comprehensive resource that listed ALL of the locally-produced theatre in Northeast Ohio.  The site first went live in October of 2013, and has been constantly and consistently updated ever since then.  (Including preparing site updates while out of the country, while on vacation, and from a hospital bed during chemotherapy treatments.)

A few years ago, I was notified by Google that the Classic Google Sites platform (and every site made in original incarnation) would be struck from the internet.  This would mean that Cleveland Stage Alliance site would be no more.  So at the beginning of my furloughed quarantine in 2020, I decided that now was a good a time as ever to completely rebuild the site from the ground up (with improvements) on Google's new site-building platform.

The new site, which continues to be maintained weekly, still lists over 100 local theatres, and has listed over 4,000 productions since 2013.  With this rebuild, many improvements have been made to create a more mobile-friendly and information rich browsing experience.  Thank you for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy the community that we have all built- together.

Eric Fancher
Founder/Webmaster
(January 2025)