page_title: Music Circus
section_title: Other venues
hierarchical_section_title: Music Circus / Other venues
caption_attribution_description: Sacramento Music Circus Tent. Submitted by photographer.
context_page_description: Music circus is an American theatrical form begun in Lambertville, New Jersey, by St. John Terrell in 1949. Established as summer stock, the new theatre venues primarily housed light operas and operettas, produced in the round, under a circus-style big top.
context_section_description: Broadway Sacramento's Broadway At Music Circus' 10-show season in 1951 included newer works Brigadoon, Annie Get Your Gun, and the seminal Show Boat. Slowly, the population of music circus theatres around the country diminished, with Terrell's big top folding in 1970. As of 2001, only three theatres of the original design still remained: Broadway At Music Circus (Sacramento, California), South Shore Music Circus (Cohasset, Massachusetts), and the Melody Tent (Hyannis, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod), the latter two venues no longer producing musical theatre, but serving as concert sites. In 2002, Terrell's open air music circus model ceased to exist as Broadway At Music Circus lowered its canvas tent for the last time to make way for a new enclosed theatre-in-the-round—the Wells Fargo Pavilion.  As a nod to history, the new arena theatre was still topped by fabric—a Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric manufactured by BirdAir.
caption: The Sacramento Music Circus Tent in 2001
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