In 1998 a very dear friend of mine took my children and I to see A Christmas Carol live on stage in Atlanta. I have always been a fan of that Charles Dickens work, but until I saw it live on stage it never really came to life. I was touched by it in a way I never had been before. After seeing the production, I read the book for the first time. I knew, then, that we could bring this wonderful story to the people of Nashville and give them a chance to experience the impact of a live stage production of that classic Christmas story. The Community of Christ was just finishing their new multipurpose building, and even back in the planning stages, I had advocated the facility be used to produce quality family oriented community theater. We started in 1999 with an idea to present this story to the community as a gift. As the sets kept getting bigger and bigger each week as they were being built, Cherry Koehler, pastor at the time, was feeling concerned. She later said; "If I had known what David had in mind at the time, I would never have given the go ahead to do it. I thought it was going to be a few people reading with cardboard sets" But she and the rest of the congregation were pleased and surprised that a rag tag little group could do something of such quality, simply because we determined that we would stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone and try something that seemed beyond our reach. It was decided that A Christmas Carol would become and annual event.

Moving into the next year we realized that we needed something special for the Easter season and From the Garden to the Grave was born. A story told in scripture, song and drama retelling the final hours in the life of Jesus. From 1999 until around June of 2003 that was all we did each year. Then along came the idea of doing a summer dinner theater in August, and the first one produced was Fools (A Comic Fable by Neil Simon). Again the positive response was overwhelming. It was during the production of Fools that we began to call ourselves Community Players for the first time. By this time more of the community at large was beginning to become involved with our productions and we recognized the need to secure financial and human support from outside the Community of Christ, and we began to investigate incorporation as a separate non-profit organization, in 2004 we did just that. Our ties remain strong to the Community of Christ as our parent organization, and our goals and objectives have not changed from what they were in the very beginning. We tried to embody those goals and objectivities in our mission statement: “Presenting “Family Friendly” theater that will inspire, entertain and strives always to exceed expectations.” Our goal is to enrich the lives of the people we encounter as patrons and participants in our productions and build relationships with those we work with. Since we incorporated, we have built even stronger relationships within the community. Community Players has become a place where people who live in the community have met each other for the first time and made a friend or two in the process. I think that is a worth while endeavor, bringing communities together.

David Hutson

Founder and President of the Board.