THE HAMNER THEATER
at Crozet Arts
In residence at Crozet Arts, The Hamner Theater, led by Artistic Director Boomie Pedersen, offers a vibrant and inclusive theater program featuring ongoing productions of both classic and original works, a dynamic storytelling series, and a Sunday Café series that celebrates performance and community conversation.
Weekly adult improv classes build confidence, creativity, and quick-thinking skills, while our theater classes for children and adults offer structured opportunities to develop voice, movement, collaboration, and self-expression. Seasonal production workshops provide immersive, hands-on experience from audition to performance. Theater at Crozet Arts fosters artistic growth, nurtures communication and teamwork, and invites everyone—regardless of experience—to explore the transformative power of live performance.
ONGOING THEATER OFFERINGS
Weekly Improv
The Hamner Theater offers weekly Improv sessions, free and open to the public.
Hamner Improv: for those who are new to Improv or are testing the waters, inclusive and fun! Give it a try!
Saturdays from 1-3pm in the Studio.
Led by Boomie Pedersen.
E-mail Boomie@thehamnertheater.com with any questions or to confirm schedule.
Sunday Café Series
Join us at the Hamner Theater Sundays at 2 PM for the Sunday Café Series—a welcoming showcase of performance and community conversation. Each week features engaging presentations from local artists, performers, and storytellers followed by open dialogue that connects creativity with shared experience.
Select Sundays from 2-4pm in the Blackbox
E-mail Boomie@thehamnertheater.com with any questions or to confirm schedule.
Playback Theater
Playback is a beautiful intersection between theatre, storytelling, and improv. Playback Theater of Virginia partners with the Hamner to offer monthly practices that are free and open to the public. No experience necessary, just a willingness to listen closely and be willing to play.
Sessions are from 10am-1pm on the second Saturday of every month.
Led by Larry Goldstein & Boomie Pedersen.
E-mail Boomie@thehamnertheater.com with any questions or to confirm schedule.
Theater Classes
↑ Scroll down within this box to see all class options currently open for registration ↑
Meet Hamner Theater Founder
Boomie Pedersen
Boomie Pedersen was born and raised in New York City (but for a couple of years in Princeton, NJ, where she met Crozet Arts’ Artistic Director Sharon
Tolczyk, at Princeton Ballet Society, and where they performed in Sleeping Beauty together.) In NYC, Boomie was a scholarship dancer with the Joffrey
Ballet. She chose to forgo a career in dance and attended Princeton University where she majored in Theater and Dance, and English. She earned her MFA in Pedagogy and Performance from VCU in 2017. She has lived in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, Crozet and Charlottesville, acting, directing, writing, teaching and raising her 6 children. Since moving to the area in 1995, Boomie has been active in both the Charlottesville and Richmond theater scenes as actor, director, producer of new works, audience, acting coach and teacher. Boomie is Founding Artistic Director of The Hamner Theater, a project-based theatre company whose mission is to boldly serve and heal our communities through conversation-provoking theatre in creative spaces. #letstalkaboutit!
Recent work at the Hamner includes The Newtown
Project, focused on uncovering the environmental and human costs of greed and oppression through local events; the VPSI – Virginia Playwrights and
Screenwriters Initiative promoting the development new work; an ongoing collaboration with UVA Playwrighting Professor and playwright Doug Grissom – Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard and coming in Oct. of 2026, The Seagull; as well as easily tourable productions that travel to
non-traditional venues, bringing theater to those for whom it is less accessible.
When she is not directing or acting, Boomie runs HIT, the Hamner Improv Troupe, which meets weekly and is open to the public and free of charge;
teaches acting, improv, Shakespeare; and coaches actors for auditions and in roles in which they have been cast.
She lives with an Envigo beagle named Francis Bacon and Maurice, a tiny, white poodle mix and escape artist. But her most important role to date was as caregiver for her mother Carol, who lived with dementia, and who shuffled off this mortal coil in January of 2023.
