'Keep everybody smiling': How the landmark Dunellen Theatre has reinvented itself

Dunellen has changed a lot in the past century. Businesses have risen and fallen, people have come and gone, but there has been one constant throughout.

The Dunellen Theatre at the corner of North and Madison avenues, opened in 1921, has been a community landmark since before movies had sound.

But now the times are catching up. The theater's screen has been dark since the pandemic, not because attendance went down, but because of a microchip.

“The actual microchip that unlocks the movie to ingest it into the digital projector died,” said Richie Zupko II, whose family owns the theater. “That chip has a battery backup. That battery backup died during the pandemic because we didn't keep turning it on, because we were trying to save money through the pandemic. So that chip can't be found, and nobody can make it.”

To survive, the theater has turned to live entertainment. Zupko worked with his friend Clint Esposito to get comedy shows rolling at first, then expanded to music. That was when Zupko found the key to the theater’s survival.

“We started doing some live bands, and then it really snowballed when I started doing tribute bands,” Zupko said, describing bands featuring the music of Billy Joel, Meatloaf, Mötley Crüe and Metallica. The theater features local, smaller bands from around the area.

“It seems to be going very well,” Zupko said.

Zupko's father, Richard Zupko Sr., was a lifelong Dunellen resident and owner of the neighboring tavern. In 1989, he bought the theater to revive it. Today, his widow Pam runs the theater with the help of her son.

Bringing the theater to life was not easy.

“My friends and I power-washed the outside of the building, scraped all the gum off the floors and the seats, and we painted the whole outside of the theater,” Zupko said. “The original nickname when my dad went to high school was ‘The Itch’ because your feet stuck to the floor from all the soda syrup and popcorn butter.”

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The theater closed in 1998 for renovations and reopened in 1999 as the Dunellen Theater and Cinema Café, serving some of the food that made Zupko’s Tavern a popular gathering place in Central Jersey, and showing first-run children's movies, hosting birthday parties and serving pizza specials with the movies.

Zupko Sr. was in charge until his death in 2007, when his son stepped up to help his mother run the theater, temporarily leaving the family plumbing business.

Everything went smoothly until COVID hit in 2020, when the theater shut down due to lockdown restrictions. That's when the projector broke, and the venue switched over to live entertainment and returned to being just the Dunellen Theatre.

One of the theater’s recent acts was Nektar, who played its 50th anniversary "Remember the Future" tour last month. Tickets for the show sold out three days in advance.

Zupko said that he and the borough would like to see the theater show movies again, but the chances of that aren’t likely.

“I would love to fix the projector and bring back kids movies,” he said. “But a new projector is $120,000.”

Zupko’s family helps with running the theater and tavern. His wife, Kimber, became the theater manager in 2011. And his children are starting to help around the place, with his daughter Jonnie Claire helping serve customers and throwing birthday parties in the theater.

Zupko, with the help of his managers, also hosts many community events for Dunellen residents and the surrounding communities.

“It brings the family fulfillment to know that we’re keeping a small business alive for the community, where multiple people from multiple generations have walked to come and enjoy,” he said.

When asked what was next for the theater, which recently celebrated its centennial, Zupko had a simple answer.

“Just keep moving forward. Keep moving forward and put on good shows and serve good food and cold drinks and keep everybody smiling.”

Sal DiMaggio is an intern reporter at MyCentralJersey.com. He covers features, news and more. Email him at sdimaggio@mycentraljersey.com.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Dunellen Theatre pivots to live entertainment instead of movies