Collection on the Children's Theatre Company

The Children's Theater Company started out as The Moppet Players in 1961 as a professional theater troupe for young audiences. They changed their name to the Children's Theater Company in 1965 when they moved to a new stage, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts lecture hall. In 1969 the Children's Theater Company started a theater school for students, an accredited grade school and high school where kids would spend half of the day studying academic work and the other half studying theater. In 1974, along with the renovation of the MIA, the Children's Theater Company space got a facelift with a $4.5 million dollar upgrade.

The Company ended its affiliation with the Institute of Arts and the Society of Fine Arts in 1975 in order to run itself. In 1984 the company ended its theater school. THRESHOLD, a new play laboratory, was started in 1998 which was designed to enlist emerging artists to write premiere plays for the Company to debut. This program, along with another neighborhood program, Neighborhood Bridges, still continues today. The Company debuts new premiere plays each year.

The new Children's Theater building, designed by Michael Graves in 2001, enhanced the Theater's offerings allowing the Company to host six mainstage productions per year as well as four additional shows on the smaller, more intimate Cargill Stage. Today, Children's Theater is recognized as North America's flagship theater for young people and families as well as a major cultural and artistic resource in Minnesota.