Stranahan Theater

The Stranahan Theater is a 2,424 seat concert hall located in Toledo, Ohio, USA. It was built in 1969 and was formerly called Masonic Auditorium. The theater's foyer is 3,000 square feet (300 m²) and the adjacent Great Hall features 10,000 square feet (1,000 m²) of meeting space. There is parking for 1,200 cars at the theater.

Fulfilling its primary usage as a concert venue, the Stranahan Theater is used for approximately 170 theater events a year. Broadway shows sponsored by Theater League have included The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, The Lion King and Wicked. It is also the site of the Pops series of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, The Nutcracker by the Toledo Ballet, and A Christmas Carol by the Toledo Rep. In addition, the Great Hall is used for about 140+ banquets, receptions, and trade shows each year.

The Stranahan Theater is the largest proscenium stage in Northwest Ohio. It operates primarily as a rental house and is owned and operated by a 501c3 non-profit trust. Former executive directors include Penny Marks and Ward Whiting. Steve Hyman was named Executive Director in May 2014.

Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and occasional actor whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by music journalists and peers alike to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock"; he has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre, theatrical brand of rock designed to shock people. Cooper is also known for his distinctive raspy voice.

Originating in Phoenix in the late 1960s after he moved from Detroit, Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. The original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album Love It to Death, which was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972. The band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies.

Theatre

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.