If you missed the touring production of The Full Monty at the Providence Performing Arts Center four years ago, you can catch a home-grown version of the popular show about a band of laid-off steel workers who take up stripping this weekend at West Kingston’s Courthouse Center for the Arts.

The show, which opens tomorrow, is part of an effort to step up the theater offerings at the center, said Russell Maitland, the center’s artistic and administrative head. Maitland, who was hired last December to create new programs for the venue, is staging a half-dozen shows at the former courthouse between now and Christmas. Plans call for establishing a professional Equity company by September of next year.

“People say it’s dead down here in the winter,” said Maitland. “We hope to change that.”

Maitland, who has been in the theater business for three decades, is looking to put on a year-round season of six main stage productions, along with children’s shows. Upcoming attractions include Comedy of Errors, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cabaret and A Christmas Story.

The main difference between the center’s Woodcock Theater and say, the Gamm in Pawtucket is that West Kingston will be going in big for musicals. And in many cases, musicals that are not that well known, shows like Violet, the Jeanine Tesori show about a disfigured woman who hopes to be healed by a televangelist, and Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, which come to the Courthouse stage in February.

Productions will take place in the former courtroom, which seats about 100. The space uses a thrust stage in the three-quarter round.

“I’m not a proscenium sort of guy,” said Maitland.

Maitland said that the center has installed a new sound system and sunk $10,000 into lighting.

In the future Maitland hopes to use as many local actors as possible. But for The Full Monty he has recruited talent from New York, Boston and Connecticut.

“They’re friends of mine who want to help out,” he said.

The Full Monty, which is based on the popular British film by the same name, is about a group of unemployed steel workers from Buffalo who turn to stripping to make ends meet, after seeing how enthusiastic their wives were over a troupe of exotic male dancers. The big moment comes at the end of the show when the male cast bares it all, amid blinding lights that make it impossible to see anything inappropriate.

The show, which Maitland is directing, uses three revolving sets. The band will wear hard hats and be perched atop scaffolding to convey the look of blue-collar Buffalo.

The Full Monty opens tomorrow at the Courthouse Center for the Arts, 3481 Kingstown Rd. in West Kingston. The show plays Thursday through Sunday through July 26. Tickets are $25, $23 for seniors and members, and $20 for students. Call (401) 782-1018.

Meanwhile, over at the Cornerstone Playhouse in Wakefield, two musicals are running in repertory this weekend. Stop the World — I Want to Get Off opens tonight and returns Saturday and Sunday, with Birds of Paradise, the Winnie Holzman (the book writer for Wicked) musical about a community theater troupe putting on a musical version of Chekhov’s The Seagull, opens tomorrow night, and shares the stage with Stop the World Saturday and Sunday.

The Cornerstone is at 213 Robinson St., and seats only about 40 people. Tickets are $25, $20 for seniors and students. Call (401) 783-8827.

cgray@projo.com