Founded in 1971 and billed as “Baltimore’s year-round fringe venue,” Theatre Project presents an array of original and experimental theatre, music, and dance. In its early years, it hosted performances by Pilobolus Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, and Bread and Puppet Theatre, as well as community outreach programs such as the Baltimore Neighborhood Arts Circus and Baltimore Voices. TP was a co-producer of The New Theatre (TNT) Festivals at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and in downtown Baltimore (1976-1979), and was crucial to the selection of Baltimore as the 1986 site of the prestigious International Theatre Institute’s biennial Theatre of Nations Festival, the festival’s only North American location.

The theater’s home facility at 45 West Preston Street has been renovated twice, once in 1983-84 and again in 1994. Such artists as Karen Finley, Danny Hoch, Holly Hughes, and David Drake have developed and/or premiered work here. Among TP’s many notable productions have been Bill Pullmann’s Expedition 6; Peter Krummeck’s Bonhoeffer; Karen Gray’s The Modified Monogamy Project; Al Letson, Larry Knight, and David Pugh’s Griot: He Who Brings the Sweet Word; and the Stanislavsky Theatre Studio’s Babel: How It Was Done in Odessa.