‘Consider Yourself Part of the Family’: Seventy Years of Music, Community, Fun

March 30, 2026
• Needham Community Theatre celebrated its 70th anniversary with a gala this weekend. Past and present members discussed their love for the local organization and its enduring legacy.

The Village Club of Needham was alive with the sound of music Saturday evening. Its gathering hall filled with beloved theater classics and sentimental favorites, performed live by the Needham Community Theatre family.

The cabaret-style celebration recognized NCT’s 70th anniversary. After an estimated 136 main-stage productions in the fall and spring, in addition to workshop productions, festival entries and a 24-hour musical recently, the community theatre troupe reveled in its history and looked ahead to its next chapter.

NCT members past and present reminisced, musing about their own productions and flipping through binders full of photos, playbills and newspaper clippings from the last seven decades. Performers dating back to the 1960s through the 2020s delighted in a selection of songs the community organization staged over the years — numbers from “The Sound of Music” and “Fiddler on the Roof” were popular picks.

The performers opened the gala with a joyous rendition of “Consider Yourself” from “Oliver!,” an NCT show three times over.

In emcee Michael Bailit’s view, it’s thanks to their predecessors that Needham’s local theater has stayed alive for this long.

“Community theaters only persist over 70 years if there are generations of volunteers who do work that allows those of us who follow to pick up that work and continue it,” Bailit said at the gala, pointing out a few key players. “We are not here without all of these people, and we are thankful and appreciative to you and thank you for being with us to celebrate this anniversary.”

The Key Players

Back in the 1960s, participating in NCT “was the thing to do,” said Christine Norman. After she got married, she made her debut in “Carousel” as a belly dancer and a horse on the carousel. She also appeared in “Flower Drum Song” and “Everything in the Garden,” two back-to-back shows in 1969 and 1970.

Norman was also cast in the lead of “Mary, Mary,” but the male lead was called away on business, and the play was promptly canceled. The group was much smaller back then, so they couldn’t replace the part, Norman said.

“I think that’s the only time in the history of Needham Community Theatre that they didn’t do two plays per year,” she said.

Norman never misses a show, even still. She comes away from each production with admiration for local talent and appreciation for their quality, and going back to Newman Elementary School for the shows, where she too performed, is “like coming home.”

“I just have very fond memories of those years where I participated, and I’m still very devoted to attending their productions,” Norman said. “When they announce a new play, I go through the casting, and see if there is any possibility that I could find something. And then I say, ‘No, no, there is no one that age that is required for the play.’”

Over about 15 years, Erlene Rosowsky did just about everything: acting in leads and in ensembles, designing, choreography and makeup. “I did everything except the technical part and building sets,” she said.

Back in the mid-1960s, when she first joined NCT, the group was much smaller and more local, she said. The town also had some oversight over their scripts “to make sure that we didn’t say anything naughty or dirty or offensive,” she said.

Still, her three children appeared in NCT shows through the years: her son, then a first-grader, played the fiddler in “Fiddler on the Roof,” one of her favorite shows. Rosowsky played Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, in the early 1970s. “I got to get married every night, which was fun.”

Now, she said she could probably play Yentel. Many decades have passed, yet she still remembers why she started at NCT in the first place. She was a young mom then, looking for grown-ups to socialize with, and she sought “continuity of self,” as she had a love for and background in theater.

“I was a dancer, singer and actress — triple threat,” Rosowsky said. “Not terrific at any of them, but the fact that I could do all of them O.K. gave me an edge, certainly in the musicals.”

She performed in “Fiddler” alongside a young Gerard Alessandrini as Tevye. Alessandrini would go onto an acclaimed career in theater, cultivating a subgenre of satirical musicals including “Spamilton” — a spoof on “Hamilton” — as well as “Forbidden Broadway,” which he customized for a Needham audience in 2016 for NCT’s 60th anniversary.

Alessandrini, a Needham native, also appeared in NCT’s rendition of “Kismet” and “Applause” in the early 1970s before he moved to New York. On Thanksgiving visits to Needham, he attended productions of “Evita” and “My Fair Lady.” Alessandrini was the first inductee in NCT’s Hall of Fame.

Having worked in professional theater, Alessandrini outlined the differences between paid talent and actors in it purely for the love of the game.

“Sometimes community theater productions have more energy and commitment than the New York ones, because to a lot of people, doing shows on Broadway, it’s a job,” he said. “But when you see them in community theater, when they’ve got one or two weekends to do it right, they may not have the talent or the training of Broadway performers, but they certainly have the commitment.”

A number of shows Alessandrini locally starred in were directed by Suzanne Bixby, who worked with NCT starting in the 1970s.

Out of college, Bixby founded a youth summer theatre group in Needham, where she helped stage large musical productions over several summers. That led Bixby to her first directing job with NCT: “Mame” in the early 1970s.

Now, NCT is much more youth-focused and driven — look to their recent productions of “Annie” and “Mary Poppins,” as well as their upcoming fall production of “Seussical: The Musical.” The transition was several decades in the making.

“It’s like night and day,” Bixby said of NCT shows then and now. “They needed kids in the shows, but there was a huge concern about keeping the kids away from the parties and the adult stuff. They were never doing anything for kids. They were just reluctantly having to include kids.”

Former cast and crew applauded the production value, the audience interest and NCT’s ability to “dig up the old chestnuts” and stage new things,” Rosowsky said.

Rosowsky and Norman also alluded to some raucous NCT post-show parties. It seems they’re now the stuff of legend.

Although one moment from a cast party sticks with Rosowsky. During rehearsals, she was styling her own hair, but she put on a blonde wig for the party. Another cast member approached her to tell her that, now, “your hair looks so much better than wearing the wigs.”

“The wigs were my hair,” she said with a laugh.

The New Generation

During the gala, a young Arden McAuliffe performed “Gary, Indiana” from “The Music Man,” a show she performed with NCT in 2023. McAuliffe’s family members also appeared in shows alongside her, including 2025’s “Annie.”

Her sister Marin appeared in a trio with Marielle Sciore and Hannah Novack to perform “Matchmaker” from “Fiddler on the Roof,” a show all three appeared in. Sciore and Novack co-created and directed NCT’s first 24-hour musical in “Grease,” wherein they casted, choreographed, rehearsed and performed in the show all in a 24-hour period.

The goal was to carry over NCT’s community-building values into a new format, one that encourages trust, experimentation and passion for the stage.

“You do a show, and it’s the people you meet along the way, it’s the experiences you have, it’s the friends you make. That’s how we became friends, is doing shows here,” Novack said, gesturing to Sciore. “And so we really wanted to give back to that community and create an experience for people to meet each other through theater.”

The multi-generational aspect of NCT makes it special, Sciore said. Fostering those connections breeds new experiences and ways for the troupe to grow, she added.

Both women referenced a line from “A Chorus Line”: “The gift was ours to borrow.” To them, it indicates the one-of-a-kind nature of performances, which attract a unique group of people for a short time to do something wonderful together. Sciore called it “an invisible string,” tying people to each other for a brief point in time.

Finding people with whom you feel tied keeps you coming back to the Newman stage, Novack said.

“They have that same itch inside and that gift to give back to the audience,” she said. “We’re sharing that with each other and with the audience.”

Maeve McCluskey sang “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from “The Little Mermaid,” a 2018 NCT musical. McCluskey starred in the titular role of “Peter Pan” in 2016 after the director — whom she met at Gloucester Stage Company — encouraged her to audition.

NCT, for McCluskey, is “a found family.” She’s since performed in several productions.

“I was like, ‘I just graduated college, I found a wonderful theater troupe. I’m just going to keep coming back, and hopefully they’ll cast me in more things,’” McCluskey said. “And here we are.”

The Newman stage has been home to love and family — many families, including Bailit’s, perform together in many shows — but also scandal of sorts. Bixby recalls a man and woman falling in love during a production, though both of them were married. As she remembers it, they separated from their spouses, but their spouses ended up getting married to each other.

“This is a very 1970s kind of story,” she said. “And as far as I know, they all lived happily ever after.”

Jeff Bunce’s love story appears far tamer by comparison. He first performed with NCT in “Brigadoon” in 1968, and his future wife Christina joined two years later in 1970’s “Mame.” Though they never dated during their early days, the pair have now been married for nearly 40 years.

Then there’s Jeff Gardner, a fresh performer in 1974’s “Play It Again, Sam” who stuck around to design sets for 27 NCT shows.

On Stage

Eighteen performers graced the Village Club stage, marking unique periods in NCT’s history. When the group first formed in 1956 — birthed out of the Linden Street Players, who were affiliated with the First Congregational Church — they only staged plays until 1964, the year of its first musical, “The Pajama Game.”

The musical attracted some attention via John Raitt, the Broadway star who played the lead in “The Pajama Game” and who showed up to Needham’s production. Raitt even signed a playbill from the show.

That was right after Bixby started college. Around the same time, she remembers Needham High School staged its first musical as well.

“It really enlarged the interest that people had in the community for being in a show,” she said.

While “everything is hurting,” Rosowsky views the arts as an “antidote.”

“I think that our town, our city needs to consider this an asset and not a drain. That’s my bias,” Rosowsky said. “I don’t know anybody who is a consumer of going to the theater who comes away saying, ‘I wish I hadn’t been a consumer of the theater, because my life is damaged by it, as opposed to enriched by it.’”

The shows change, but NCT often sticks to its classics — “Annie” and “Fiddler” have both been staged four times — but also embraces new shows, like “Shrek The Musical” in 2022.

Gala attendees spanned the generations, gathered together out of a love for musical theater and a sense of community. Proceeds from the gala will go toward the NCT Scholarship Fund, which supports NHS seniors in the arts.

Performers sang recognizable numbers, such as “If I Was a Rich Man,” “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” as well as selections from “The Little Mermaid,” “Chess” and “The Music Man.”

NCT shows are still performed at Newman, decades later and possibly decades to come. The evening ended, poignantly, with an ensemble rendition of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from “OKLAHOMA!,” a show NCT staged in 1981 and 1991. The message was clear: The sun is still rising for NCT.

Scanning the faces in the crowd, young and old, everyone had a glimmer in their eyes. They cheered and beamed at songs they knew, smiled at familiar faces and talked through their memories. Perhaps there’s a reason many have stuck around all these years.

“NCT is such a wonderful community, and we do such amazing work, just through all of the efforts of all these volunteers,” McCluskey said. “How can you leave?”