Pasadena Playhouse
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The Pasadena Playhouse is a historic theatre located in Pasadena, California.
[edit] History
The Playhouse's history began in 1917 when actor/director Gilmor Brown began producing a season of plays at an old burlesque house, which he renamed the Savoy. The community theatre organization quickly grew to prominence and in 1925, the citizens of Pasadena raised funds to build an extraordinary theatre in the heart of the city. It was known originally and for the first few decades of its existence as the Pasadena Community Playhouse. Its community theatre (ie: non-professional) beginnings and the tremendous amount of local support led George Bernard Shaw to dub Pasadena “the Athens of the West.”
Designed by Elmer Grey (whose notable credits include most of the California Institute of Technology campus and Polytechnic School) and built by the Winter Construction Co. (also noted for Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood), the theatre drew the attention of the nation; bringing Southern California world premieres by authors such as Eugene O’Neill, William Saroyan, Noel Coward, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams. The Playhouse was declared the State Theatre of California in 1937 after the remarkable achievement of having performed the entire Shakespeare canon for the first time in this country.
A school of theatre arts was established in the late 1920s that became an accredited college by 1937 (known informally in Hollywood as the “Star Factory”), eventually training actors such as Robert Preston, Randolph Scott, George Reeves, Dana Andrews, Raymond Burr, Dustin Hoffman, Sally Struthers, Victor Mature, Charles Bronson, Robert Young and Gene Hackman among countless others. (Legend, and more recently theatre publicity, has it that film star William Holden studied at the Playhouse and was discovered for the movies there. In truth, Holden never studied at the theatre nor appeared on its official stages; rather, he was discovered while appearing in a private theatre owned by Playhouse director Gilmor Brown.) During the school years, the Playhouse was constantly abuzz with activity having as many as five independent stages in operation at any given time, making the Pasadena Playhouse the single most prolific theatrical producing organization in the world.
The varied staging capabilities offered by its five venues led the Playhouse to become of the first companies in history to experiment with new theatrical forms such as theatre-in-the-round. This experimentation took on a new dimension when the Playhouse built and operated one of the first television stations in Southern California. In addition to training the Air Force to use television and radio equipment, the Pasadena Playhouse supplied the majority of Southern California’s early TV stations with the first trained technicians in the business.
Upon the death of founding director Gilmor Brown, changes in Actors Equity Association laws, and the opening of drama departments in many schools and universities across the country the theatre went bankrupt in 1969 and was reopened again in 1985, since when it has grown into prominence again as one of the most respected theatrical organizations in the nation.
[edit] The Pasadena Playhouse Today
Today, Pasadena Playhouse is under the guidance of Sheldon Epps, whose mission of cultural and theatrical diversity has brought new life to the theatre, as is reflected in the performance seasons and extensive outreach programming. Pasadena Playhouse serves its community through partnerships with a local school and social service organizations, providing workshops and performances as a part of their regular curriculum. Development of new theatrical work is encouraged through the Hothouse at the Playhouse reading series, which presents a regular season of works in progress by local writers. It is also important to the Pasadena Playhouse to maintain strong ties with the local artistic community, and each Mainstage season features at least one co-production or theatrical collaboration as well as permanently playing host to resident artists, such as the Furious Theatre Company, who perform a regular season of plays in the new Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse.
