The Vero Beach Theatre Guild

The Vero Beach Theatre Guild is a community theatre founded in 1958 that performs at 2020 San Juan Avenue in Vero Beach and, on its own website, calls itself the Treasure Coast's only community theatre.

The Vero Beach guild says it started with one purpose, to make theatre accessible to everyone, and states its mission as enriching, entertaining and educating the community through theatrical arts. It describes a team of staff, volunteers and board members, a main stage season, a Studio Theatre series for adult audiences and the Theatrical Learning Center, which offers classes, camps and workshops for students from age 8 through adult.

The guild is older than the professional stage it helped create in Vero Beach. For its first years it performed in borrowed rooms, then served as the resident company of the Riverside Park theatre that later took the name Riverside Theatre. In 1985 it moved across the river to San Juan Avenue, where a converted church remains its home.

According to the guild history timeline, the Vero Beach Theatre Guild formed in 1958 after earlier theatre efforts by the Business and Professional Women and other groups.

From 1959 onward the Vero Beach guild staged its plays at the old naval base, the junior high school and the high school, moving from one borrowed stage to the next.

There was no Vero Beach playhouse in those years. The timeline records that props and costumes were kept, and sets built, in people's garages. Recognition followed quickly: the Genie Awards, which honor excellence in theatre and are still the guild's annual awards, began in 1962 and are named for Eugene C. Davis, the guild's first director.

The guild's own history page frames the Vero Beach story as one that started with a team of just a few dreamers and grew into a full community theatre drawing both residents and visitors. During its 67th season the guild looked back on the decades of work its volunteers had given the community, and the timeline it published then is the basis for the dates on this page.

The guild was the first resident acting company of the Vero Beach Community Theatre in Riverside Park, which opened in 1973 and was later renamed Riverside Theatre, the guild timeline records.

The link began with the City of Vero Beach. In 1964, following the city's plan for cultural activities in Riverside Park, the guild signed a 99-year lease with the city and built its own first small building in the park, where sets were built, props and costumes stored and rehearsals held, although performances still used the high school stage. In 1965 the Vero Beach Community Theatre Trust was founded to raise money for a new 600-seat theatre for Indian River County, and construction started once the funds were raised.

The new Vero Beach Community Theatre opened in 1973 with the comedy Tom Jones. For the next 12 years the guild was its resident acting company. In 1985 new Trust leadership decided to bring professional theatre to Vero Beach, and the guild, sticking with its basic mission of theatre involving the community, left Riverside and moved to San Juan Avenue. The touring Riverside Road Show became Guild on the Go.

Volunteers turned a former church on San Juan Avenue into the guild's Vero Beach theatre in 1985, putting in 16,000 volunteer hours before the first season there opened in December with John Loves Mary, a sentimental choice from the guild's first season.

The building has been rebuilt in stages. In 1992, with significant fundraising, foundation grants and state grants, the guild began major renovations, and the San Juan Avenue theatre reopened in January 1993 with Rumors. The 2008 season was the guild's 50th anniversary. The timeline also recalls that when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne struck the Treasure Coast, one show was canceled and the winds led to a new metal roof, soundboard and soffits.

The latest Vero Beach expansion is the East Wing. Having outgrown the theatre and rented storage units off campus, the guild began a capital campaign in 2013 for a three-story complex to house new dressing rooms, rehearsal space and costume storage. Construction began in 2015, the summer of 2016 was spent preparing the interior and moving in, and the guild once again had a mortgage. In 2018 off-campus storage was vacated and costumes, props and furnishings were moved to the third floor.

The 2010s also changed what the Vero Beach guild put on stage. The timeline says the 2017 main stage season introduced some challenging, large-scale musicals on the guild's modest stage, and that the board elected that June focused on exploring new, contemporary works of the American theatre. In 2011 the costume department moved to a nearby annex and the guild's off-site storage greatly increased two years before the East Wing campaign began.

Season 69 at the Vero Beach Theatre Guild runs from October 16, 2026 to May 9, 2027, with four main stage shows on the Season 69 page and three adult-audience titles in the Studio Theatre.

The second Vero Beach stage has grown in recent seasons. The timeline says the theatre became a year-round operation in 2019, presenting seven main stage productions and three staged readings in the Apron Series, and that in 2024 it debuted Blackbox After Dark, a series of adult-themed productions in the Studio Theatre. The guild describes the series as three shows designed for mature actors and adult audiences in an intimate blackbox setting.

Tickets are sold three ways, according to the box office page: by phone at 772-562-8300, in person at the San Juan Avenue box office, which is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and one hour before showtime, and online. The stated policy is no refunds, with ticket exchanges allowed up to 24 hours before the ticketed date.

The Vero Beach Theatre Guild is a membership organization whose annual members get voting rights at the annual meeting, early access to tickets and a 15 percent discount on classes, not including camps, according to the guild website.

Volunteers do much of the work in Vero Beach. The volunteer page lists roles in marketing, the box office and fundraising, and on the production side in the costume and prop shop, hair and wig design, makeup design, set construction and scenic painting, and it says all volunteers receive two complimentary tickets to the invited dress rehearsal of the show they work on. The timeline notes that five new candidates were elected to the board at the June 2017 annual membership meeting.

Education is the newest branch. The timeline dates the Theatrical Learning Center to 2022 and a 2011 arrangement that gave Vero Beach Charter High School use of the stage for two spring productions. The fall 2026 class list includes improvisation, scene work and a one-person show class that culminates in a showcase performance, taught at the San Juan Avenue theatre by instructors including Sarah Wuellner, Scott Peterson, Nick Malone and Michael Naffziger.

The accessibility page lists designated handicapped parking in the paved lot next to the Vero Beach theatre, wheelchair-accessible seating with one companion seat, wheelchair-accessible restrooms in the central lobby, and a limited number of assisted listening headsets at the box office, available first come, first served with a photo ID as deposit. Phone orders can also be placed through Florida Relay by dialing 7-1-1.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, when the Vero Beach Theatre Guild home page, history timeline, Season 69 and Blackbox After Dark listings, box office, volunteer, class and accessibility pages were re-read.