James Adams Floating Theatre

The James Adams Floating Theatre was a floating theatre founded in 1914 by James Adams and his wife Beulah, which toured Chesapeake Bay staging theatre in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. It was visited by Edna Ferber while writing the 1926 novel which inspired Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Broadway show Show Boat.

Contents

• Steamboat era oral history the james adams floating theatre
• Steamboat era oral history remembering the james adams floating theatre
• References

In 1941 the theatre was destroyed by fire while being towed to Savannah, Georgia to be refitted. A group of volunteers is working to build a reproduction.