Edison Theatre is the only fully technically equipped, proscenium thrust theater at Washington University in St. Louis and plays a varied role on campus.
Edison serves as a teaching facility for the Washington University Performing Arts Department, which produces three mainstage Edison shows each year and serves as a performance venue for Washington University student organizations.
Edison is also one of the few theaters in the St. Louis area to serve as a rental house for locally based presenting arts organizations such as The Black Rep.
At its capacity, Edison Theatre seats 656.
Officially named Samuel B. & Charles B. Edison Theatre, but known affectionately as “the Edison,” the theater’s construction was made possible through a generous donation from Mrs. Samuel B. Edison in 1972 and is named after her late husband and son.
Washington University in St. Louis occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Osage Nation, Missouria, Illinois Confederacy and many other tribes as the custodians of the land where we reside, occupy, and call home. We recognize their sovereignty was never ceded after unjust removal and encourage your own research on tribal removal, tribal sovereignty and the history of the land you reside. We promote the inclusion of tribal history and the incorporation of contemporary thoughts and actions into your work. In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and support Tribal sovereignty, history and experiences by elders past, present, and seven generations yet to come through their continued connection to this land.