Theater Companies

Affiliated with the Wang Center, the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (617/426-0863, www.commshakes.org [1]) has been performing the Bard outdoors for the past decade. The free summertime performances take place in July and August at the Parkman Bandstand in Boston Common [2].

For two decades, the Huntington Theatre Company (264 Huntington Ave., 617/266-0800, www.huntingtontheatre.org [3]) has been regarded as Boston’s [4] top professional theater company. Under the tutelage of artistic director Nicholas Martin, several of its performances have recently gone on to Broadway. The company’s works tend toward well-crafted dramas with emotional storylines. In addition to its main stage at the Boston University Theatre, it also performs at the BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion.

Across the river in Cambridge [5], the American Repertory Theatre (617/547-8300, www.amrep.org [6]) has earned an enthusiastic following for its more avant-garde performances that often feature elaborate post-modern stage design. In addition to two stages at Harvard’s Loeb Drama Center (64 Brattle St., Cambridge), the company recently opened the Zero Arrow Theatre (2 Arrow St., Cambridge, 617/495-2668), which has a flexible stage for even more cutting-edge productions.

The multistage Boston Center for the Arts (539 Tremont St., 617/426-5000, www.bcaonline.org [7]) is a South End [8] complex that features several modern resident theater companies. In addition to the 360-seat Calderwood Pavilion, the complex has four smaller stages of varying sizes.

Last but not least, the Charles Playhouse (74 Warrenton St., www.charles-playhouse.com [9]) is home to two long-running Boston favorites, the bizarrely comic Blue Man Group (800/982-2787, www.blueman.com [10]) and the interactive whodunnit Shear Madness (617/426-5225, www.shearmadness.com [11]), a cheesy Boston tradition for more than 25 years and 12,000 performances.