ABOUT US

JaDuke began in 1997 as a performance company, bringing live music to audiences across Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, and staged its first musical, Man of La Mancha, that August. As productions grew to as many as five Broadway-style musicals a year, rising costs led to the guiding philosophy of “Outsource Nothing.” JaDuke started designing and building its own sets and props and creating its own theatrical backdrops, along with lighting, sound, and costumes. That in-house craftsmanship fostered creativity, built new talents, and gave JaDuke complete artistic control, and it laid the groundwork for the scene shop and backdrop business that would become central to the company.

In 2007, JaDuke built a new home in Turners Falls, MA, an 8,500-square-foot facility constructed largely by volunteers, with the JaDuke Scene Shop and a theatrical backdrop rental company at its core alongside a dance school and preschool. Over the next decade, the scene shop kept growing, designing and building increasingly elaborate sets and theatrical environments. JaDuke Backdrops, which began as a way to create scenery for JaDuke’s own shows, grew into a national rental company supplying schools and theaters across the country. Moving so much scenery between outside venues helped drive the decision to build a theater of its own, and in 2017 ground was broken on a 22,000-square-foot facility with a 535-seat theater and a stage 100 feet wide and 50 feet deep, plus a television studio and a four-room recording studio.

The theater opened in September 2019 with The Sound of Music, a showcase for everything the scene shop and backdrop team had built over the years. The backdrops were designed and created in-house, and the sets were designed and constructed by the JaDuke Scene Shop in the original building. Today, the scene shop continues to create the scenery that turns imagination into reality, and JaDuke Backdrops brings theatrical magic to stages across the country. JaDuke has always been a performance-based arts company, and because we produce and design our own shows, we get it. We understand how important the work is and how invested our clients are in their shows. That is why we are always available: one of our team will answer the phone and personally respond to every email. We help our clients make their shows better, just as we do our own, one show at a time. By working together, we can make “Scenes Come True.” You can even call our owner and founder, Nick, and he will actually answer the phone and try to help as much as possible.