The Salt City Playhouse: An Itinerance 1978-1981

Founded in 1968 by Joe and Pat Lotito, the Salt City Playhouse had a 35 year run, entertaining Syracuse audiences and giving local actors, designers and playwrights a first opportunity to have their work presented on a public stage. But then years after its inception, the Lotito's dream of creating a truly professional regional theater would be tested by a broken economy of sharply rising fuel prices, and some said, by the obstinacy of Joe Lotito himself. Cut off by editors, the survival of the theater would come down to something as basic as keeping heat in the cavernous Playhouse - requiring all the grit, imagination, and generalship that Joseph N. Lotito might possess. With a cast including such memorable personnel as its Quaker box office attendant, a skateboarding lightshow artist, and a rolling turnover of actors, directors and technicians, this Itinerance is the story of three critical and tumultuous years in the House that Joe Built.