Raiders of Niagara Theatre Company

Established 20 years ago, Raiders of Niagara began with Randy Rumley’s love of the arts. Randy, along with his colleagues at NCCC, noticed a lack of events to share their poetry. Randy and his friends began creating events at local bookstores and colleges to showcase their work. Besides hosting and attending poetry events, Randy was also acting in and directing plays with local community theatres. 

During one of these events, a colleague of Randy’s, knowing his background in the arts, asked if he knew of anyone who could put on a murder mystery dinner show for a fundraising event he was holding. Although he didn’t, he was confident that he would be able to gather enough actors to create one. Working with so many different theatre companies, he began calling actors he worked with on past shows and asked if they would be interested in working on a murder mystery dinner with him. He was happy that so many said yes. The event was such a success that some of the guests asked if he could do the same thing at their fundraisers.
Between the murder mystery dinner shows and poetry events, Randy was always being asked for a card with his company’s name. Not having one, he decided it was time to create one. Working at Niagara County Community College, and with many of his poetry events being held in Niagara County, he knew he wanted Niagara to be a part of his company’s name. Now, for how to represent his theatre side. He thought back on his process of putting together his first murder mystery show, and how he kind of raided all of these different theater companies for actors and props. Playing with the word “raid” led him to the word raiders… And with that, Raiders of Niagara was born.

While Randy had fun directing the murder mystery shows, he missed directing full stage shows. Randy spoke to his priest about using the church as a location for another play and, with his blessing, he was set. Randy had worked well producing and directing shows with Christine Coniglio in the past, and asked her to partner with him on this new venture. With Julie Lucia as our Stage Manager, and Dylan Coniglio handling all IT and social media, Raiders of Niagara was formed. Over the years we have produced a variety of shows - from comedies to dramas.

Since Randy’s passing in 2022, our company has dedicated itself to carrying on the tradition 
of community theatre – staying true to the inclusive and creative beginning that Randy had started.