In 1981, a music teacher named Marietta Phinney started giving drama and music lessons in her backyard in Hyde Park. There was no plan behind it beyond the obvious one: kids in the neighborhood didn't have anywhere to learn to sing, act, or dance, so she taught them in her own yard until that stopped being enough room.
Forty-five years later, that backyard program is Riverside Theatre Works, and this month it's throwing itself a party. The 45th Anniversary Gala lands this Saturday, September 26, and the theater is opening its landmark anniversary season with a production of "The Sound of Music." If you live in Hyde Park and haven't been paying attention to the building at 45 Fairmount Avenue, this is the year to start.
The Plan Nobody Finished
Here's the part of the story that doesn't get told alongside the anniversary press releases. Fairmount Avenue was never supposed to end up with just one theater. At some point, Hyde Park Main Streets, Tierney Realty, and the preservation group Historic Boston looked at what arts venues had done for other struggling commercial strips around the city and decided Fairmount Avenue could be Hyde Park's own version, an actual branded arts corridor with RTW as its anchor tenant.
That's still, as far as the public record shows, the plan. Riverside Theatre Works remains the only operating theater in Hyde Park where you can walk in and watch a live performance. No second venue opened next door. No gallery row followed. The corridor didn't get rebuilt around the theater the way the plan imagined it would.
What happened instead is quieter and, honestly, more interesting: the theater itself became the infrastructure. It didn't need a district to justify its existence. It just kept running seasons, one after another, until running seasons for 45 years became the achievement, not a stepping stone toward some larger redevelopment that hasn't shown up yet.
What Actually Turns 45 This Year
Riverside Theatre Works isn't a passion project that happens to still exist. In a typical year, the organization works with roughly 350 students, stages five mainstage productions, and layers in additional youth company performances on top of that. That's not a hobby calendar. That's a working nonprofit theater with a season schedule tight enough that Broadway World and ticket aggregators track it the same way they'd track any regional playhouse.
Phinney's original motto for the place still hangs over everything RTW does:
"Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible."
It's the kind of line that could read as a plaque platitude if the theater hadn't actually spent 45 years proving it. The recently completed season alone tells you the range this small stage covers: a concert with Broadway veteran Liz Callaway in September, a full run of "Young Frankenstein" through October and November, "The Full Monty" in the dead of winter, and "Seussical the Musical" closing things out in May. That's a theater comfortable moving from a comedy classic to a family musical to a cabaret concert inside a single season, all from a stage most people outside Hyde Park only know as a stop on the Fairmount Line.
This Season's Lineup
The 45th anniversary season opens with a show built for the occasion. Here's what's on the calendar so far:
- The Sound of Music — the season opener, staged as the marquee production for RTW's landmark year, built around songs including "Do-Re-Mi" and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain"
- And the World Goes 'Round — a musical revue built entirely around the songbook of Kander and Ebb, the writing team behind "Cabaret" and "New York, New York"
- Summer: The Donna Summer Musical — a high-energy tribute to the disco icon that specifically traces her rise from her roots in the Boston area to international stardom
That last one is a nice detail for a Hyde Park audience specifically. Donna Summer's story starts in this city, and a Hyde Park theater staging a musical about her homecoming, on a season built around its own founding story, is the kind of scheduling coincidence that only works because the people booking the season know their own neighborhood.
The Gala, and a Familiar Name
The Saturday gala is where RTW's anniversary turns from programming into something closer to a reunion. The theater is presenting its Marietta Phinney Legacy Award, named for the founder herself, to two honorees this year: Pat Tierney and Massachusetts State Representative Rob Consalvo. The gala description calls them "two pillars of the Hyde Park community," and the evening is built around live performances, dancing, and fundraising for RTW's future productions and youth education programs.
One name on that list is worth sitting with. Pat Tierney shares a surname with Tierney Realty, one of the three organizations that floated the original vision for turning Fairmount Avenue into an arts corridor built around this exact theater. Whether that's the same person or simply a shared last name in a neighborhood where families tend to stick around for generations, the coincidence lands well. The institution that outlasted the redevelopment plan is now handing an award to a name tied to the plan's origin. Forty-five years on, RTW isn't waiting for the corridor to catch up anymore. It's the reason anyone still talks about Fairmount Avenue as an arts street at all.
If you've never been, the theater sits at 45 Fairmount Avenue, close enough to Cleary Square that a pre-show dinner is an easy walk rather than a drive. Tickets and the current show calendar are posted directly on RTW's own site, and the anniversary gala on the 26th is open to sponsors and community members who want to be in the room for it.
Forty-five years is a long time for anything in a neighborhood to survive without a bigger institution absorbing it, renaming it, or letting it quietly close. Riverside Theatre Works didn't need the arts district that was supposed to grow up around it. It built the case for one all by itself, one season at a time, and this year it's throwing itself the party it's earned.
We write these neighborhood notes because we live in them too. If you're curious about what else is changing in Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, or Roslindale, or you're thinking ahead to buying or selling in one of these neighborhoods, Juan Real Estate Group is always glad to talk. Let's connect, book a free valuation or consultation, and get into it.
