Butler City Mayor Bob Dandoy announces the winners during Leadership Butler County's "Dancing for a Cause" event at the Penn Theater on Friday, May 29, 2026. Matthew Brown/Butler Eagle

Matthew Brown

This article is one in a series of articles about what life looks like in Butler County ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026. Stories in this series aim to showcase what it’s like to live, work, play and serve in Butler County during this moment in history.

When it opened in April 1938, The Penn Theater showed the American musical Western film, “The Girl of the Golden West” with state-of-the-art projection equipment.

Today, it is a 14,000-foot living hub for the arts in the city of Butler, featuring two central event spaces: its first-floor multipurpose and reconfigurable event space, the Lydia Mainstage and its smaller second-floor box room with fixed seating, the Bantam Auditorium.

Though the theater has seen highs and lows over its 88-year history, it welcomes live acts, movie showings, corporate events and other community gatherings.

It is also on one of the last art deco buildings in the United States.

The Penn Theater has been a cultural landmark for much of Butler’s history. Ahead of this July 4, take a look at how the renovated nonprofit is shaping Butler’s cultural district today.

Bernie Carr, 84, is known by a few at The Penn Theater as the ‘Grand Van Dame.’ She is one of the dedicated staff of volunteers who keep up with the theater’s day-to-day operations.

Carr is never without work to do.

Executive Director Jaloyn Fockler makes it her mission to keep the theater busy, driving ticket sales and bolstering the theater’s financial sustainability.

With acts booked every weekend, the theater draws crowds of all ages.

It’s a “breath of fresh air to the community,” Carr said. “You don’t have to go to Pittsburgh for entertainment.”

Members of the Butler County Symphony Orchestra perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "America the Beautiful" during the Toast to Tourism event at the Penn Theater on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. Matthew Brown/Butler Eagle

Matthew Brown

The theater gained new life after Wallace Group Productions, led by Bryan Frenchak and Marina Silver-Frenchak, purchased the Penn from the Pittsburgh History and Landmark Foundation and the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Butler for $65,000 in late 2022, according to the Redevelopment Authority’s website.

The building, which saw a formal closure in May 2001, decades of disrepair and the threat of condemnation by the city, has been completely renovated by the group.

“People put money into it without knowing if we were going to be able to be sustainable or not with the hopes that we were going to bring back the theater and bring back east of the cultural district for downtown Butler,” Frenchak said.

The Wallace Group leases the Penn Theater performance company who operates the theater.

The company, which walks in at a deficit each month and needs to replace the roof of the theater, is still getting closer to profitability.

Various patrons and donors, like the Wallace Group, have helped sustain the theater in the interim while it is making headway toward long-term sustainability.

Yet, in its year and a half of operation, the community has already had a positive response to its revival.

General manager Natalie McCaw said that patrons will stop her and say, “thank you so much for doing this,” and “it’s just been a joy to have this back in the community.”

“I say that our tagline should be, ‘the people’s theater,” Fockler said. “We’ll have people, even on social media, post about our theater, and when people take ownership of something, it becomes theirs.”