South City Theatre

South City Theatre has been staging community productions in Shelby County since 1999, and since 2015 its home has been a storefront space at Alpine Square on Pelham Parkway in Pelham. The nonprofit, a registered 501(c)(3), calls itself “The Best Little Theatre In Alabama,” a nod to how much the small company packs into a modest black-box space just off the parkway.

The theatre was founded by Alan and Francie Gardner, who ran it for twelve years across several locations before Sue Ellen and Mike Gerrells took over leadership in May 2012. Sue Ellen now serves as artistic director while Mike oversees facilities and technical direction, and Daniel Strickland joined as a second technical director in 2016. The move to Pelham in 2015 reportedly tripled attendance and doubled the size of the theatre’s youth programming, a shift the current leadership points to as a turning point for the organization’s growth.

South City stages six mainstage productions a year and has mounted more than 200 shows since it opened, drawing roughly 3,000 audience members annually. The company has picked up recognition beyond Shelby County too. Its 2020 production of The Gulf won multiple awards at the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and Collected Stories was recognized at the national AACTFest in 2021, putting a small-town Alabama company on a national stage alongside much larger regional theatres.

Beyond its mainstage season, the theatre runs Acting Up, a youth theatre program for ages 9 to 16 built around workshops and a summer camp. The program gives younger performers a structured way into acting, stage craft, and public performance, and it feeds into the broader pipeline of talent that shows up in South City’s adult productions year after year.

Programming ranges from straight drama and comedy to themed events like The Pelham BEAT, a dinner mystery evening that pairs a buffet with an interactive whodunit. Recent and upcoming shows have included The Shark Is Broken, The Cottage, and a holiday production called Christmas Queens, reflecting a mix of newer scripts and crowd-pleasing seasonal fare across the yearly lineup. The variety keeps the small venue busy for most of the calendar year, rather than concentrating shows into a single short season.

Tickets for most mainstage shows run in the twenty to twenty-five dollar range, with discounts available for students, seniors, and groups. Shows are staged at the company’s Alpine Square space at 2969 Pelham Parkway, Suites J-K, and tickets can be purchased online or by calling the box office at (205) 621-2128. Because South City is a working community theatre rather than a retail storefront, there is no standing walk-in box office; showtimes and ticket windows are tied to each production’s run, so checking the current schedule before visiting is the most reliable way to plan a trip. The company is also affiliated with the Alabama Conference of Theatre, the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and the American Association of Community Theatre, and it tours smaller productions out to area libraries and partners with local organizations for community events throughout Shelby County.

What sets South City apart from a lot of small community theatres is its consistency. Producing six mainstage shows a year, on top of youth workshops, a summer camp, and touring performances, is a heavy lift for a volunteer-driven nonprofit working out of a suite in a Pelham strip center, and the company’s national festival wins suggest the effort shows up on stage. For Pelham residents looking for live theatre without a drive into downtown Birmingham, South City fills that role directly, with a season built around both serious drama and lighter, family-friendly fare.

Because the venue is small, seating for popular shows can sell out ahead of the run, particularly for holiday productions like Christmas Queens or dinner-mystery nights like The Pelham BEAT. Reserving tickets online in advance rather than planning to buy at the door is generally the safer approach for anyone hoping to catch a specific performance date at Alpine Square.