Zoo (which is actually located in the city of Royal Oak). June is marked by an annual fine-art fair, but the big arts event is in late August, when more than 200 musical acts fill up ten stages on Royal Oak’s streets for the Arts, Beats, and Eats festival. For more great food, visit in November for the Annual Royal Oak Chili Cook Off, where professional chefs and amateurs alike compete for the title of the best chili in town. One of these years, I’m going to convince my husband to enter.
Even when there isn’t a fair or festival going on, Royal Oak’s shopping district—about a mile-long stretch down the city’s two main roads, Washington and Main Street—is filled with dozens of specialty boutiques, art galleries, vintage-clothing stores, and an amazing variety of restaurants, pubs, and coffee shops. And in the heart of it all is the Baldwin Theatre, home of the Stagecrafters community theater company. The Stagecrafters originally called the nearby city of Clawson their home. They began there in 1956, when Clawson residents Robert Johnson, then a sophomore at Michigan State University, and Sally Bosz, a senior at Clawson High School, decided to start a summer theater program. With a cast and crew of only 30 people, the company—then known as the Clawson Community Club Players—performed Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit as a part of Clawson’s annual Fourth of July celebration. The play was performed in the Clawson Elementary gymnasium and was declared “a hit” by local newspapers.
Because of the success of their first production, the company decided it needed to move to a bigger venue and was granted the use of the auditorium at Madison Height’s John Page Middle School. With the move to a new city, the troupe decided to change its name, and in 1957 the Stagecrafters company was officially born.
Over the next decade the troupe grew and eventually returned to Clawson, where they purchased an old church on Bowers Street. The first play to debut at the Bowers Street Playhouse was Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace; the year was 1971. The company continued to grow, and in 1983 the Stagecrafters were invited by the International Amateur Theatre Association to take part in an exchange program with a theater troupe in England. They visited St. Albans the following year to perform on the stage of the Abbey Theatre.
The Main Stage auditorium of the Baldwin Theatre.
By the following year, they knew it was time to move again; they needed a bigger theater with more space for rehearsals, a larger stage, and more room for building sets. When the city of Royal Oak offered them the Baldwin Theatre, the company took up a collection for the down payment, took out a mortgage to cover the rest, and purchased the property. They renamed their theater “The Baldwin.” The article on the Baldwin’s home page describes the restoration on the old, long-abandoned building as both a “Herculean task” and a “labor of love”—after talking to Lesley it was easy to see that that wasn’t an exaggeration.
After Christmas, I called and set up an appointment to come back to the theater. Lesley met me at the box-office door and walked me through the back halls to the lobby, and then onto the main stage. She told me that the Baldwin was originally a silent-movie house and that it was older than the more well-known Fox Theatre, in downtown Detroit. Also, that when it was first built, back in 1922, “the Baldwin was considered the grandest theater in the Midwest.” Looking out at the auditorium from the main stage, I had no difficulty believing that.
“All of this has been restored,” Lesley said, as I was admiring the architectural décor, much of it reminiscent of Greek murals. “All of the murals you’re looking at were covered up by truly awful-looking yellow curtains—we had no idea what we would find behind them. It was a pleasant surprise, but it was a lot of work to make this place beautiful again.” The walls, Lesley told me, had been painted in what could only be described as a hideous shade of “blood red.”
“The auditorium originally seated 1,400 guests, but we knew a community theater would never need that much seating, so we created the lobby area at the back and turned the mezzanine into our lighting and tech booth.”
Lesley also told me that the Baldwin’s pipe organ—once a staple in silent-movie houses—was still operational and that they host a couple of pipe organ concerts each year. “We have one of the few functioning pipe organs in the state,” she added. As she continued with the theater’s history, I learned that after the silent-movie era, the Baldwin hosted vaudeville performances. “Rumor has it Houdini performed here,” said Lesley, “but it’s just a rumor.” In the 1950s, the Baldwin was converted over to “talkies”—talking pictures—and first-run movies were shown. But by the 1960s, the theater began its long, slow decline, showing only second-run films. The theater finally shut down after a fire in 1984. It was shortly thereafter that the city of Royal Oak sold the theater to the Stagecrafters, and they began their long and loving restoration process.
In addition to the main stage on the first floor, there is a second, smaller stage built into the old balcony area, behind the lighting/tech booth, where smaller productions are shown.
Lesley told me that she’s had a number of paranormal investigators come through and has heard lots of stories from employees and patrons alike about ghosts. She invited me to follow her backstage and explained that quite a few people have claimed to hear “deliberate, slow” footsteps in the wings, just under the rigging, even though no one else was anywhere nearby. Next she led the way downstairs to the “green room,” where actors hang out between scenes. It’s also where the Stagecrafters’s costumers work, creating wardrobes for each of the company’s productions—as many as ten plays per year on both stages and as a part of their youth program.
“What most people don’t know is that this used to be a fallout shelter,” Lesley added, as we walked down the narrow stairs. It’s also where there has been the most spectral activity in the past. “People have said they felt like they were being watched. I’ve even had people say they felt like someone had touched them down here,” said Lesley.
She pointed out the door to the orchestra pit and said that when she first came to the theater, no one seemed to be able to photograph it clearly. Pictures were always distorted or clouded over; many had orbs in them. “It’s been quiet the last couple of years,” she added, explaining that in the beginning she had so many people coming through that she wonders if maybe the ghosts got annoyed and went away—or at least have decided to lie low for a while. “You’re the first person I’ve had through here in almost a year.” I felt both flattered and grateful to Lesley for giving me not only so much of her time, but also allowing me to tour the theater and write about it.
She went on to tell me about one particular incident in which a theater worker—he’s not with the theater any longer, although that has nothing to do with the ghosts—came downstairs to find that all of the furniture and a bunch of boxes that he’d stacked up earlier in the day had all been moved to the center of the room. At first, he assumed the actors or staff members were pulling a prank, but everyone who was there denied having anything to do with it. Not only was the man in question one of the most honest people Lesley said she’d ever worked with, but also he didn’t see any reason to doubt his colleagues—and there hadn’t been very many people around that day, anyway.
Lesley led the way through a labyrinth of corridors to the wig and makeup rooms, back up the stairs to the lobby and up to the second stage. “We’ve probably had as much activity up here as down in the green room,” she told me, although the second stage has also been quiet the last few years.
Lesley told me about one man’s particularly harrowing experience in the second stage area. Behind the stage is the lighting/tech booth, for the lower, main stage. One of the stagehands was going about his business when he got locked in the booth—the door should have opened, but he said it seemed “stuck.” For the next several minutes, he heard loud pounding, like someone beating their palms or fists up against the walls from
