On a spring evening in Fairhope, the bluff above Mobile Bay turns into one of the most scenic stages in American community theater. Blankets and lawn chairs spread across the grass, the sun drops behind the water during the first act, and a cast made up almost entirely of local students performs a full-scale musical as the sky changes color. This is Theatre on the Bluff, the signature production of Eastern Shore Repertory Theatre — and the creation of Erin Langley, the founder, executive director, and artistic director who has spent two decades building one of the Gulf Coast’s most remarkable children’s theater programs.
The 13th annual Theatre on the Bluff, staged in spring 2026, brought Disney’s Frozen to the bluff April 29 through May 2, with Langley directing and Matthew Kiel choreographing. As in every year of the event’s history, the setting did half the promotional work: gates opened at 6:30 p.m., picnics were encouraged, and audiences settled in at Henry George Park with the bay at their backs as the sun went down.
A childhood divided between Maine and Fairhope
Langley was born in Portland, Maine, and her introduction to theater came early: at age seven, her grandfather took her to a local production of The Sound of Music. “I fell in love with theater immediately,” she has said. The family’s move south, when her father was transferred to Fairhope, changed the trajectory in an unexpected way — because in the Fairhope of her childhood, there was almost nothing for a kid who loved theater.
“There were very few theater opportunities for children in Fairhope when we moved here,” she has recalled. She and one other theater-minded kid, David Scott, searched the area for anything to get involved with and found nothing. The absence stuck with her. Years later, the program she built would be designed to make sure no Eastern Shore child would face that same blank search.
Langley earned her degree in elementary education at Spring Hill College in Mobile, met her husband Karl — a musician who traded classroom teaching for a music career and co-founded the band The Marlow Boys, from the Marlow community near Fish River — and both began their careers teaching second and third grade in the Baldwin County School System.
From classroom to company founder
Erin left teaching first, joining a regional theater company that toured schools across the Southeast with character-building shows; she wrote three original scripts that the company performed on the road. In 2005 she founded her own company, Jitterbug Theater Productions, writing shows and touring Baldwin County schools. Then in 2012 she created the nonprofit Eastern Shore Repertory Theatre — the organization that turned a one-woman mission into a community institution.
Before that, from 2010 to 2012, she worked as an artist in residence with the Fairhope Educational Enrichment Foundation, directing shows with Baldwin County students. “Most of these kids performing in the shows had never been exposed to the theater in their lives, didn’t even know what live theater was, and performing was the first time they had ever seen any theater before,” she has said. “It was eye-opening.”
The nonprofit ESRT is a 501(c)(3) with a mission to educate and train local students and present professional-quality theater experiences for the community, providing theater education and productions for children of all ages, abilities, and cultural heritages. Its home base on Captain O’Neal Drive in Daphne, near May Day Park, hosts auditions, rehearsals, and shows throughout the year. Langley remains the organization’s only full-time employee, supported by a part-time assistant and a volunteer corps that runs everything else.
Theatre on the Bluff and a national reputation
Since ESRT’s first production — Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 2014 — the organization has mounted dozens of shows, anchored by two major productions each year: the spring show on the Fairhope bluff and a fall production at the Fairhope Civic Center. The spring event alone draws casts of around 90 young performers supported by another 100 volunteers, and it has become one of the Eastern Shore’s signature evenings — the kind where the sunset over Mobile Bay becomes, as one longtime patron put it, part of the show.
The national recognition has piled up. ESRT has earned the highest national recognition at the Junior Theatre Festival — the world’s largest musical theater festival for young people — for nine consecutive years, including a Freddie G Excellence in Dance award at the 2016 festival in Atlanta and selection to perform in the New Works Showcase that previews upcoming musicals for Music Theater International. Students have been named festival All-Stars, tapped for callback auditions to film instructional choreography videos for upcoming Broadway Junior releases, and repeatedly chosen for elite honors among thousands of attendees.
Langley’s relationship with Music Theatre International runs deep: the New York licensing agency regularly asks her to mount pilot productions of new shows, using her students to test scripts before they go out to broader audiences. She has also directed numerous premieres for MTI across the country. And twice in recent years the company took its show on the road to Manhattan — performing the 50th-anniversary production of Godspell and Newsies Jr. at Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, with special permission from composer Stephen Schwartz for the Godspell anniversary.
The Tony nomination and a shelf of honors
Langley’s own recognition tracks the organization’s growth. She was a 2022 finalist for the Tony Awards’ Excellence in Theatre Education Award, one of the highest honors available to an educator in American theater. That same year she received the Alabama Council on the Arts’ Theater Fellowship. Earlier honors include the Freddie Gershon Fellowship in 2015 — a national award for excellence in theater direction of young people — selection as a 2019 Directors Lab West fellow in Los Angeles, a spot in Mobile Bay Monthly’s 2017 Forty under 40 class, the title of “Best Baldwinian” from Lagniappe Magazine in 2021, the City of Fairhope’s Quality of Life Award, and Impact 100 Baldwin County’s Young Philanthropist recognition. She serves on the board of the Alabama Arts Alliance, and her reach extends beyond Baldwin County: she has traveled to Haiti to create theater programs for children in Port-au-Prince and Montrouis.
Her reach back into her own childhood circle is its own full-circle story. David Scott — the other theater-loving kid from her Fairhope childhood — now works for Disney Theatrical Productions in New York. He helped create Theatre on the Bluff with Langley, returns every year to contribute, has co-directed productions, and designs the event’s lighting annually.
A community engine, not a one-woman show
For all of Langley’s central role, ESRT describes itself — accurately — as a community effort. The ESRT Auxiliary, established in 2015, supplies more than a hundred volunteers who work every area of production, from set and costume design to concessions and fundraising, which flows through ticket sales, sponsorships, and grants. IMPACT 100 Baldwin County has made two major grants to the organization, and a board of directors oversees its operations. Langley’s long-term goal is to build a foundation and endowment to sustain the organization beyond her own tenure, ensuring that the life-changing experiences she has created outlast her tenure.
The educational pipeline runs deep. Summer programs serve kids from age six through high school seniors; the free “Celebrate Theater” outreach program invites anyone to find their place in theater; Kids Academy Theater offers classes for first through sixth graders; and paid internships — many filled by former ESRT performers — help run the summer programs. Open casting calls require no experience, and participants have come from as far as Mobile and Pensacola.
The results show up downstream. ESRT graduates have won theater and dance scholarships to prestigious universities and gone on to professional theater careers, and many return to contribute when they can. The University of Alabama recruits ESRT students into its theater and dance programs, and discussions have explored collaborations with Auburn University’s theater program as the organization’s reputation has spread.
What comes next
The calendar never really empties. Beyond the two mainstage productions, ESRT runs musical theater summer camps, dance and musical theater classes, and participation in the Junior Theater Festival — and every season’s shows have a habit of selling out, which veterans of the organization attribute to a simple formula: professional quality, a spectacular setting, and a community that considers the cast its own friends and neighbors.
Langley has described the community buy-in as hard-won but complete. “We’ve had lots of conversations through the years,” she has said. “People were skeptical at first, but now we have complete buy-in.” More than 90,000 audience members later, the once-empty theater landscape she encountered as a child has become one of coastal Alabama’s cultural anchors — built one young performer at a time.