summer theater

American  

noun

1. a theater that operates during the summer, especially in a suburban or resort area, usually offering a different play or musical comedy each week.

2. summer stock.

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Etymology

Origin of summer theater

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

“Someone said it was going back and seeing your favorite people from summer theater camp.”

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 10, 2026

Sharon — who met her husband at a summer theater program — saw this as an opening: They’d get set up in California and use the movie as leverage to get Keke more work.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 10, 2024

That was in 1961, and the next year, while touring in summer theater during television’s off season, she starred with Ludden — by then a widower with three children — in the comedy “Critic’s Choice.”

From Seattle Times • Dec. 31, 2021

And if you have, this “Scenes” feels less like a reimagining than like a highbrow stage revival — movie stars spending a few weeks doing Ibsen at a summer theater fest.

From New York Times • Sep. 9, 2021

An account of a disastrous summer theater production was downright hilarious.

From Epistles from Pap: Letters from the man known as 'The Will Rogers of Indiana' by Hay, Douglas (Douglas N.)