Last Thursday, June 27, was Surflight Theatre’s 70thbirthday.
Yep, 70 years, to the day, before a man named Joseph P. Hayes unveiled his very first show on LBI in a tent called the Surflight Amphitheatre, pitched on a vacant lot on Long Beach Boulevard near the present location of Kubel’s Too in Brighton Beach.
It was quite the premiere for a three-week season of shows boldly titled “Summer Rhapsody, A Musical Revue Under The Stars,” with the entire 1949 production devised, staged and produced by Hayes.
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
