Staff photo / Andy Gray Easy Street Productions co-founder Maureen Collins served as mistress of ceremonies at the gala.

YOUNGSTOWN — Some of the people who got their start at the Youngstown Playhouse went on to acclaim on stage and screen, such as Oscar nominee Elizabeth “Biff” Hartman (“A Patch of Blue”) and three-time Emmy nominee Ed O’Neill (“Modern Family”).

Others who started at the Playhouse found success behind-the-scenes, including Tony-winning producers Marc Routh, Michael Moritz Jr. and Joey Monda. Some succeeded in spite of being passed over at Playhouse auditions, such as Maureen McGovern, who sang two Oscar-winning songs and received a Drama Desk nomination for her work in “Little Women” on Broadway.

And far more stayed in the Mahoning Valley and entertained local audiences, be it in a single show or decades of work on stage or as part of the crew.

The Playhouse culminated a year-long celebration of its centennial season with a 100th Anniversary Gala on Saturday at its home for more than half of that tenure at 600 Playhouse Lane.

Board President John Cox said it wasn’t just a year of shows and events that went into this celebration, it was several years of surviving a pandemic, financial issues and the struggles all art organizations face to attract audiences in a world with boundless entertainment options for consumers.

“I just feel proud and humbled that I get to be here while all this is going on,” Cox said during the VIP reception before the main event.

Many Playhouse vets returned to take part in the festivities. Howland native Kayla Boye, who now lives in Chicago, sang “All That Jazz” from the musical “Chicago.” Others enjoyed the show from the audience.

Routh, who hadn’t been back in 40 years, came at the invitation of board member Stephen Weiss. Routh made his Playhouse debut as a child, playing Mr. Beaver in a youth theater production of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and then played Young Patrick in the musical “Mame” the following year.

It was at the Playhouse that Routh realized his true passion was the work involved offstage, and he credited Bentley Lenhoff, who served as director of the Playhouse for more than 20 years (longer than anyone else), for that epiphany.

“He was a mentor to me,” Routh said. “He would come in when I was working at the box office, sit there and just chat with me, tell me his philosophy of running a theater. On that basis, I decided I wanted to be a producer. By the time I was a senior in high school, I wanted to run a place like the Playhouse.”

Now Routh produces shows all over the world. His company is producing the current tours of “Stomp” (which played Youngstown last month) and “Back to the Future.” He has a new musical called “The World’s Greatest Lover” premiering at Edinburgh Fringe this summer, a revival of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” opening in China and an immersive version of “Mamma Mia” in the Netherlands.

Lenhoff died in 2015, but his wife, Nancy, and daughter, Alyssa, were in attendance.

“It’s so nice to see it still continuing,” Nancy Lenhoff said. “I’m so thrilled. Youngstown has always supported the arts.”

Maureen Collins, co-founder of Easy Street Productions and another person who got her start at the Playhouse, served as mistress of ceremonies for the event.

The gala program featured a cast of more than 30 performers singing snippets of musical numbers from shows the Playhouse had staged or that complemented its history, and in some cases they portrayed figures from the theater’s history.

Terry Shears portrayed Arthur Sircom, a Broadway stage director who had several stints running the Playhouse, and interrupted the action on stage, something that (according to legend) Sircom was known to do if he saw something he didn’t like. That turned into Shears singing, “O, What a Dutiful Warning,” a reworking of “O, What a Beautiful Mornin'” from “Oklahoma.”

Music director Rick Blackson accompanied the performers on piano and wrote the original music and lyrics that were a part of the production.

The history of the community theater was chronicled decade by decade with different pairs of narrators sharing each 10-year block, focusing on notable productions, personnel changes and — particularly in the more recent decades — the deaths of many prominent Playhouse figures.

Before the finale of “We Are a Family” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” Cox came on stage and talked about the Playhouse’s future, which includes opening a new performance space in downtown Youngstown at the former home of the Oakland Center for the Arts in the Morley Building at 220 W. Boardman St. The first show will be “The Lyons” in March 2026.

“We are looking right now to start an endowment,” Cox said. “We’re going to be out pounding the pavement looking for some people to help us. We want to be able to bring in a national executive director or artistic director. It’s very hard to get people into Youngstown, to keep great talent in Youngstown. We want to have something set up for the next three to five years, that’s salary for that person and salary for an assistant, so we can now take where we’ve gotten over the last several years and completely build upon that and set us up for the next 50 to 100 years.”