For over 10 years, River & Rail Theatre has been a fixture in the Knoxville arts community, bringing together both local and national talent to tell stories about our city, its people, and its history. Their production of works such as 2024’s The Burn Vote, that details the Women’s Suffrage Movement as it unfolded in East Tennessee, attest to the power, influence, and importance that Knoxvillians and our neighbors have had not only on our local community but also on the nation at large. Through his work at River & Rail, Artistic Director Joshua Peterson desires to preserve a deep sense of Knoxville history through theatre, to respect and value the history of our city and its stories. And it seems that such storytelling has been a resounding success. After 10 years in the Old City Performing Arts Center, River & Rail has their sights set on bigger things: a new venue, new stories, and new opportunities for theatre in Knoxville.
While the Old City Performing Arts Center (OCPAC) has served River & Rail and Knoxville theatergoers for years, the production company has outgrown the venue, and in 2024, began searching for a larger venue that would allow the company to expand their offerings and better support creative personnel and production partners. Pressures both internal and external led to the decision. From the sale of adjacent properties on State Street to outside interest in acquiring the OCPAC, outside pressures also factored in R&R’s move. While Peterson expresses his love for the OCPAC, noting its historic grit in the heart of the Old City as resonating with R&R’s values, he regretted the concessions that had to be made to make that space work.
Peterson originally bought the OCPAC for $650,000 and invested more than $200,000 in the venue to transform it into a performance space. And even with these updates, the space still did not completely suit R&R’s needs. For one, OCPAC has no designated dressing rooms or green rooms, spaces essential for actors; thus, the executive office spaces are sometimes used as dressing rooms, and occasionally makeshift changing booths were set up backstage to facilitate costume changes. And, if you’ve ever been to a R&R show, you’ve probably bumped into one of the actors in the restroom during intermission, as there’s no designated restroom for the production company backstage. And while these peculiarities of the OCPAC can feel very democratic, as R&R’s work seems to be, it is also taxing on the company, limiting the types of productions and the size of casts and audiences that they can bring to the space. In a desire to grow the company and to bring our city new and bigger theatre, R&R set out to find a new venue that would serve their vision. And in 2024, they have done just that, with the purchase of another historic property: the 100-year old Sterchi-Audigier Residence along Magnolia Avenue.
The historic building, located at 2651 E. Magnolia Avenue, was built in 1925 and was the home of W. H. Sterchi of the renowned Knoxville furniture wholesaler family who built a number of our city’s iconic buildings. Designed in the Spanish Eclectic architectural style popular during the time, the home is a rare example of the style in Knoxville and is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The home was sold to art collectors Louis B. and Eleanore Deane Audigier in 1936, and in the 50s, saw the addition of a congregational space to the rear of the home. After a fire in 2022 damaged the upper story and posed the threat of demolition, the Knox Heritage Foundation and others fought to preserve the historic home. The purchase of the property, valued at $1.65 million, by River & Rail helped to protect the Sterchi-Audigier Residence from demolition, and Peterson hopes to bring new life to the space while honoring the history of the home, just as R&R has done in the OCPAC.
Architects: Benefield Richters, Images designed by Juliana Terra of the Urbano Group
Peterson is excited to discover how the new venue will allow River & Rail to grow and serve Knoxville’s arts and culture even better than before. He hopes its prominent location along the Magnolia Corridor, which is also booming with development of other cultural centers and experiences such as Zoo Knoxville, Muse Knoxville, Chilhowee Park, Pellissippi State Community College, and the new Covenant Health Park, the new stadium for the Knoxville Smokies, will make the work R&R does more visible and to bring more people to experience the Knoxville theatre scene.
Architects: Benefield Richters, Images designed by Juliana Terra of the Urbano Group
The congregational addition to the rear of the home will serve as the theatrical space able to welcome larger audiences and bigger productions, and the home will provide designated areas for actors like green rooms, dressing rooms, private restrooms, and designated rehearsal spaces. The 2-acre lot the property sits on also provides over 100 parking spaces for theatre-goers, a major upgrade from the OCPAC that had no designated parking. The new venue will also allow the company to produce more shows than ever before—Peterson hopes for 6-production seasons once the move is complete—and for many of those productions to be stories about local histories; Peterson mentioned two commissioned works he hopes to produce in the new venue for the 2026 season, including a play about local clothier Marcus Hall and a musical inspired by the Clinton 12, the first group of Black students to integrate into the previously all-white Clinton High School after the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling. In addition to powerful local storytelling through theatre, River & Rail hopes to expand their existing educational programming, although specific plans for this programming are still being developed.
While R&R is early in the renovation and transition process, Peterson says the Magnolia property “checked so many boxes and exceeded our expectations” and is flexible enough to grow with the company. The 2-acre property can allow them to expand the theatrical space if needed to accommodate the growing attraction of local theatre to our community. R&R will round out one last season at the OCPAC while in this transitional period, so changes aren’t happening anytime soon. But after ten years in the Old City—when the company debuted their first public event on April 18, 2015—Peterson and R&R are happy to have found their “forever home.”
