City Theatre Miami
City Theatre is a Miami-based, award-winning professional theater company founded in 1996. City Theatre's mission is to develop and produce works that engage, reflect, and impact its community. City Theatre is renown for developing and producing short plays by well-known and emerging writers discovered through the Susan J. Westfall National Short Playwriting Contest. The various "shorts" programs began in 1996 with the flagship Summer Shorts, an annual program of eight short plays presented during June. The Short Cuts Middle School Tour is a live, in-school performance of four short plays presented for free to students of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. City Reads, presented in partnership with independent bookstore Books & Books, invites the community to listen and react to a reading of short plays by professional actors at the bookstore for free. The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at the Miami Foundation recently funded the launch of Homegrown, a program created to nurture, elevate, and promote Miami's BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) writers. This initiative aims to develop new plays authentic to Miami's multicultural voices to add to the nation's theatrical canon.
Since 2007, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts' Carnival Studio Theatre has been home to City Theatre's mainstage productions. Summer Shorts and an annual full-length production presented as part of the Arsht Center's Theater Up Close Series. The Carbonell Committee honored City Theatre with the prestigious Bill Von Maurer Award in 2016, recognizing its significant contributions to South Florida theater development through its dedication to the short form play format and fostering new play development. On June 9, 2021, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava recognized the company in honor of "City Theatre 25th Anniversary Day."
