STAAR’s Been Going Strong for More Than Two Decades

Southern Tennessee Area Arts Repertory (STAAR) is an arts and theater organization based in Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee. STARR has provided theater, music and arts entertainment and education for the Southern Middle Tennessee and North Alabama region for more than two decades. STAAR operates a successful 200-seat theater from its comfortable and accessible street-level facility beneath the historic 1868 Antoinette Hall Opera House.

More than 10,000 have attended productions at STAAR, traveling from throughout Middle and South Central Tennessee and North Alabama and beyond. As an integral part of the community, STAAR encourages economic growth by inviting its guests to eat at local restaurants, spend the night at local lodging establishments and visit other historic and cultural attractions.

In an average year, STAAR stages more than 60 performances with approximately 600 children ages 3-18 on stage, more than 300 adults on stage and more than 100 teens and adults directing, assisting, coaching, providing technical services, creating costumes and sets and preparing and executing marketing plans for productions. STARR provides in-house piano, dance and vocal instructors. STAAR’s board and leadership are especially committed to identifying the region’s underserved populations and continuing to design ways to engage these individuals, regardless of age, race, creed, handicap or economic status, either through participation in STAAR activities or as an audience member.

The many performances hosted at STAAR’s facility throughout the year offer entertainment options for those of all ages and interests. These have included diverse cultural offerings from gospel music to magic shows to concerts to original productions. STAAR is able to make the theater available to theater troupes enabling original productions and offerings from groups beyond those produced by STARR to stage performances. STARR also hosts regional acts to enrich the area with a wide variety of diverse talents from comedic, to vocal, to authors, musicians and filmmakers.

STAAR continues to be successful in its goal of providing arts education for Giles and surrounding counties. It serves ages five and through senior adults by staging local bi-monthly productions. STAAR offers education in drama, dance, music, visual arts, cultural arts, public speaking, writing, dinner theater, musicals, ballroom lessons and dancing and comedy. Hundreds of young people from diverse backgrounds participate in productions and learn the art of performance and team work that encourages and enriches their lives. The goal, in addition to inspiring a lifelong love of the arts, is to mentor leadership skills which will enrich the entire community.

STAAR’s History

STARR grew out of an organization that emerged in the mid-1980s as the Lynnville Area Arts Association (LAAA), which gathered local musical, theatrical and visual arts talent into a 501c3 and staged performances in a storefront building in the historic district of Lynnville, Tennessee. By 2001 the organization had grown to include theater, visual arts, musical performance and writers’ groups and was serving as an outlet for cultural arts for a broad area of Southern Middle Tennessee and Northern Alabama.

Antoinette Hall was built in 1868 and served as an Opera House for traveling troupes, local productions, graduations, lectures and other cultural events before closing in 1918. The once Grand Proscenium staging, with private box seating and notable acoustics was written about as ‘… one of the largest and most magnificent halls this side of Cincinnati” in news reports of the day. The building, is located on the east side of the public square facing the Giles County Courthouse and is a contributing structure to the Pulaski Courthouse Square Historic District. The District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior in 1985. The Antoinette Hall Preservation Society (AHPS) is a companion organization to STAAR that was born of the desire to restore the historic Antoinette Hall so that it can once again become a center of arts and culture for the community and the region.

As a 501c3, donations to STAAR Theatre at Antoinette Hall are tax deductible.