Paper Mill Playhouse: New Jersey's Broadway Nursery

In a quiet suburb of Millburn, New Jersey, tucked alongside a creek in a former industrial mill building, sits a theater that has been quietly sending productions to Broadway for decades and earning a reputation as one of the most important regional stages in the country.

Paper Mill Playhouse was founded in nineteen thirty-four and staged its first production in nineteen thirty-eight, in a converted paper mill on the banks of the Rahway River, an appropriate setting for a theater that would itself become a kind of workshop for the manufacturing of musicals. For most of its early history it operated as a traditional regional house, presenting seasons of classic musicals and plays to suburban New Jersey audiences.

What transformed it was a sustained commitment to developing new work and reviving underperformed musicals with a level of production quality that could compete with anything on Broadway. That ambition attracted Broadway-caliber directors, choreographers, and designers, and the theater began generating productions that were worthy of transfer.

The list of shows that have moved from Paper Mill to Broadway reads like a highlights reel of recent musical theater: A Bronx Tale, Honeymoon in Vegas, Bandstand, Disney's Newsies, and The Great Gatsby are among the productions staged here, several of which went on to Broadway.

In two thousand sixteen, Paper Mill received the Regional Theatre Tony Award, the highest honor given to American theaters outside Broadway. The state of New Jersey has officially designated it the State Theater of New Jersey.

Paper Mill is also home to a large theater school and education programs. The old mill on the Rahway River has become, without much fanfare, one of the most productive incubators of American musical theater working today.