Youngstown Playhouse celebrates its 100th season with its 2024-25 schedule.

J.E. Ballantyne Jr. is chronicling the other 99.

This month Ballantyne will release two books — “A Place Where Stars Still Shine” ($29.95), a history of the community theater, and “A Youngstown Playhouse Scrapbook” ($16.95), a collections of photos, programs articles and other memorabilia — and a 10-part documentary called “The Youngstown Playhouse — A Centennial of Live Theater.” The 39 one-on-one interviews with Playhouse personnel used to create the documentary and provide information for the book also will be available during the season at www.centennialproject.org.

Ballantyne, a playwright and critic who has been involved in more than 600 productions in a career of 60+ years, started work on the project nearly nine years ago when he approached James McClellan, who was operations manager at the time, about doing something for the centennial. Since that initial meeting, it’s been an everyday effort to produce.

“I knew that the place that held most of the information that I needed was the archive room, and nobody had done anything in there,” Ballantyne said. “In fact, it was a trash room at that point. Anything they had that they didn’t know where to put, they just tossed it in there. And so I decided, well, I’m going to have to be the archivist, because nobody else is going to do it.

“That’s how it took off. And then I got in touch with my friend Mike Rossi, who had done a lot of video work for me, and threw the idea out to him. And he loved it. He always wanted to do a documentary, so this fit right in with what he wanted to do. That’s really how it got going.”

The archives weren’t well organized, but they contained a wealth of valuable information, including old photographs, newspaper clippings and programs. In some cases, names, shows and dates were included with the photos. But there were many years where the photos had no identifying information, and unless there were unique costume elements, there was no way to identify the productions or the people shown.

Ballantyne has been involved in local theater for decades, but he discovered many surprising details, especially about the theater formative years.

“I think the biggest thing was how fast they got started in 1924,” he said. “Community theater really didn’t exist in Youngstown at that point. They had theater clubs, which were membership things. You had to be a member to do a show with those people. But when they took off with this idea, almost right away got directors in from New York.

“Part of the reason for that was Helen Moyer, who came to Youngstown and had been on Broadway and worked on Broadway. She had these connections, and she got them to hire Broadway directors to come in and direct their early shows. In fact they almost exclusively had nothing but Broadway directors that came in right from the get-go, which I found was fascinating for an upstart community theater like this. You’d think they’d just grab whoever you can that wants to direct something. But no, they started out big right away. And those directors led to other directors because they knew people, and that’s what eventually led to (director) Arthur Sircom coming in (doing multiple shows between 1948 and 1954), which was actually the first really true professional influence the Playhouse had.”

With so much information to draw from, Ballantyne tried to focus on the high points, the most important happenings at the theater and its most influential productions, but he said he doesn’t gloss over the financial problems and other difficulties the Playhouse has endured in its history.

“People have asked me over the years, when they knew I was doing this, ‘Is this going to whitewash history?’ And I said, ‘No, no no. History is good and bad.’ You’re going to get some of both. I think there’s more good history than there is bad (in the book) because I think there’s been more good history than there’s been bad.”

For the last half century or so, Ballantyne had people who were involved on stage and behind the scenes that he could interview. Some of those interviews were on camera and provided information for the documentary as well as the books. Others that couldn’t be scheduled on camera provided fodder for the book.

“We got some great stories,” Ballantyne said. “Maureen Collins, her interview is just fantastic, Todd Hancock (both cofounders of Easy Street Productions and Playhouse veterans), same thing. David Jendre, Joe Scarvell (veteran Playhouse performers and directors), those people went way back, and they had some really great stories … We got a lot of history from those people.”

Jendre and Scarvell have died since those interviews were conducted. Cinematographer and co-director Rossi died early this year, which threatened to derail the documentary part of the project.

“For a while, we were really doubtful that the documentary and the interviews would get finished, because we couldn’t find the files. We had no idea where they were,” Ballantyne said.

Some tech savvy folks — Dave Tach, Nick Roncone and Rossi’s wife, Lisa — were able to access the files, and Mario Ricciardi of Appleridge Productions stepped in to finish the final two installments of the documentary.

The books will be released on Aug. 12, and the documentary will be available around the same time, either as a full set or by viewing individual episodes on demand through the website. Screenings of the documentary also are planned at the Playhouse with dates to be announced.

Ballantyne said book signings and other events will be scheduled throughout the centennial season.

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