There’s a new show in town. The new owners of the former White Heron Theatre on North Water Street have not only purchased the property—they also come with a lofty new goal for the theater itself. The Nantucket Performing Arts Center, as it’s called, has reimagined the theater as not just a space for a single production company, but as a stage that can be used by other arts groups, nonprofits and education programs.“

The White Heron is a different nonprofit that will potentially live on somewhere else in the country,” said Chris Bierly, board president of the Nantucket Performing Arts Center. “But this is a completely different thing. I wouldn’t think of it as how we will maintain what was here before. The space was here before, but we’re a new nonprofit with our own mission and our own ambition, which is to provide a great performing arts center for the island.”

Bierly had been on the board of the White Heron, and had pushed for some time for the theater group to open its doors to other island arts groups to use its 150-seat stage. At the same time, rumors circulated that the White Heron Theatre—which for over a decade had hosted Broadway actors for professional, experimental and outside-the-box productions—would shut down. Bierly feared a housing developer would swoop in, and that the stage would be lost.

A former White Heron board member and a senior partner at Boston-based consulting firm Bain & Company, Bierly even pitched a purchase to several island nonprofits, but the$13 million asking price was unreasonable for them. Bierly then started reaching out to artists he knew, who reached out to other artists, to get the ball rolling on a performing arts center. Bierly’s group received donations from51 donors for the performing arts center, collecting over $6 million. They closed on the property in April for $9.5 million.

“When I was on the board of the former theater organization, I thought this really ought to be a broader community asset,” Bierly said. “It was essentially an asset for one nonprofit theater group. It was open 50-60 days a year. I thought that was a wonderful thing, but it was not the full potential of what it could be. And so to preserve this and then turn it into something to its full potential—what it can be a performing arts center year-round—I think that’s a pretty unique opportunity.”

The North Water Street campus includes the 150-seat theater with balcony seating, plus a courtyard and a 1,315-square-foot residence for staff and visiting artists. But that residence is in need of a renovation, part of major fundraising effort led by the three-person board of Bierly and other former White Heron board members Bob Doran and James Malone.

“We’re saving something that was not necessarily going to remain a theater, and that was unlikely to remain a theater,” Bierly said. “It’s a beautiful theater on an island that has a 150-yeartradition of theater and the performing arts going all the way back to New Yorkers coming here in the 1800s and doing stuff in the summer. This is the only dedicated-purpose-built performing arts space on the island. It has everything you need to do Broadway or the like here in Nantucket, and it was really at risk of going away."

The property had been owned by Lynne and Roger Bolton since 2012, and was run by Lynne Bolton and co-artistic director Michael Kopko.In 2016, the $7million facility opened as the first purpose-built venue on the island designed specifically for professional repertory theater. The theater hosted Tony Award-winning directors and Broadway actors. WhenCOVID-19 shut down the performing arts in2020, the theater company created the White Heron Radio Theatre. It put on “The Ghost Light Series” and a radio drama of “A Nantucket Christmas Carol,” an island-themed adaptation of the Dickens classic narrated by late Oscar, Tony and Emmy winner Christopher Plummer.

“What was certainly not here before and is 100% new is the idea that this space will get developed as a community center, a place that other arts organizations can share,” Bierly said. “That’s not that common in the arts world.”

While its full 2025 schedule has not been finalized, the group has agreed to host Nantucket Film Festival screenings this June, as well as comedian Kevin Flynn’s comedy education program Stand Up and Learn. It will also put on two shows this season: What the Constitution Means to Me and Theatre People.

“I think Nantucket innately fosters and incubates art so beautifully, and has for a really long time,” said actress Mary Seidel, one of the members of the group’s artistic advisory board. “This is an intended space to do so, and we’re all very excited to open the doors, work together and create cool things.”

The new ownership group is still seeking donations to renovate the campus and hire an artistic director. In addition to improvements to the residence on the quarter-acre site, Bierly said the group’s goal is to lower the balcony seating and install new seats. Still, other aspects of the theater will remain. “The demand for art is here, the interest is here, the history and the richness of the artists are here,” Bierly said.