Latest news with #PasadenaPlayhouse
Atlantic
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
In L.A., The Future Is Bolder, Tastier, and More Welcoming
When Danny Feldman took over Pasadena Playhouse in 2016, the historic theater near Los Angeles was on life support, emerging from bankruptcy but unable to fund a full season. Yet Feldman sensed an opportunity to spur change. 'When you're in those moments of vulnerability, there's a certain freedom,' he says. 'You might as well shoot for the stars and dream big.' Pasadena Playhouse's precarious financial position, he knew, was not entirely unusual. Across the country, regional theaters are staging fewer shows, scheduling fewer performances, and laying off staff. For Feldman, a Los Angeles native who previously led L.A.'s Reprise Theatre Company and New York's Labyrinth Theater Company, addressing this systemic challenge meant answering a universal, fundamental question: How do you make theater matter in the 21st century? 'My experience with theater in general—and this includes Broadway as well as regional theaters all over the country—is that we've lost our way. I think in many ways, we've become elitist,' he says. To ensure a future for Pasadena Playhouse, and to point the way forward for regional theater nationwide, Feldman knew he had to make theater as accessible and appealing to as many people as possible. To do that, he started by lowering the barrier to entry, offering $35 rush tickets, free shows for K–12 students, and an expanded roster of public access programs. He made sure that the theater's programming reflected a diversity of voices and styles, staging everything from experimental comedy (Kate Berlant's one-woman show, Kate) to revivals of classics (Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog). He also worked to transform the Playhouse into a flexible space, ripping out seats on multiple occasions for experimental formats and fostering a party atmosphere to attract different audiences, particularly younger ones. 'We make theater for everyone. And what that means in practice is that we want everything—the stories we tell, the people we have in our seats, and the artists on our stage—to represent the full spectrum,' he says. It was a fitting approach for a theater with a history of invention. Founded at the urging of community members in 1917, Pasadena Playhouse became a cradle of innovation: It launched one of the United States' first acting schools, premiered works by Tennessee Williams, and hosted a star-studded list of other playwrights and performers, from Eugene O'Neill to George Bernard Shaw and Martha Graham. 'We challenge assumptions here. It's in our DNA,' Feldman says. 'We don't just do things the way other people do things. We stop and say, 'What are we trying to do here? What's the assignment?' And that often leads to risk-taking.'
Los Angeles Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Pasadena Playhouse wades into the vaccine debate with 2025-26 season led by Tony winner ‘Eureka Day'
Pasadena Playhouse announced a 2025-26 season Thursday led by Jonathan Spector's satire 'Eureka Day,' a newly minted Tony Award winner for best revival of a play, which centers on a mumps outbreak at a progressive private school in Berkeley whose PTA tries to come up with a vaccine policy that suits everyone — to hilarious results in an era of vaccine skepticism. 'In these times we need laughter and we need to be able to think critically about ourselves,' Playhouse artistic director Danny Feldman said. 'An audience laughing together is such a good entrance to heavy themes and big ideas.' Next up will be Peter Shaffer's 'Amadeus,' which opened in 1979 and won the Tony for best play in 1981 with Ian McKellen winning lead actor honors. Director Miloš Forman made it into a 1984 film, which won eight Oscars including best picture. Shaffer also won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. The story is a fictional account of the contentious relationship between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his rival, Antonio Salieri, the court composer of the Austrian emperor. Calling 'Amadeus' one of the great pieces of historical fiction for theater, Feldman said it's a show he's been planning for the Playhouse for quite some time. Another Feldman favorite, and the third show on next season's calendar, is a world-premiere adaptation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1947 musical, 'Brigadoon.' The adaptation, by Alexandra Silber, remains true to the original, Feldman said, but 'really puts it forward for today's audience ... with covert but impactful changes that sharpen it in an exciting way.' The two-person hip-hop musical, 'Mexodus,' rounds out the main stage offerings. A fifth show will be announced at a later date. Written by and starring Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, 'Mexodus' explores the little known history of the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Using looped musical tracks that the men lay down live during the show, the production follows the journey of an enslaved man who flees south and meets a rancher. 'It's more of a musical experience than a traditional musical, so it's very genre busting and innovative,' Feldman said of the technique used to bring the music to life. 'It's a bit of a magic trick.' Two family shows are on the schedule: 'The Song of the North,' created, designed and directed by Hamid Rahmanian for children ages 6-12; and 'The Lizard and El Sol,' originally developed and produced by the Alliance Theater in Atlanta for ages 5 and younger. The former will be presented on the Playhouse's main stage, which is a departure from past family programming. 'The Song of the North,' based on a classic Persian love story and presented near the Iranian New Year, promises breathtaking visuals through the use of 483 handmade shadow puppets wielded by talented puppeteers. 'The Lizard and El Sol,' staged at local parks as well as in the Playhouse courtyard, tells the charming tale of a lizard in search of the newly missing sun. It's based on a Mexican folktale and presented mostly in Spanish, although it can be enjoyed by non-Spanish speakers too, Feldman said. 'We don't look at our family programming as separate,' says Feldman. 'It's really core to our mission.' The season announcement comes during a banner year for Pasadena Playhouse. The State Theater of California celebrated its 100th anniversary in May, and in April it announced it had raised $9.5 million to buy back the historic campus it lost to bankruptcy in 1970 — putting the company in charge of its fate for the first time in more than 50 years. That good news came two years after the theater became the second-ever L.A. organization to win the the Regional Theatre Tony Award. 'As we purchased our building and came into this moment of thinking about the next century, it felt like there was a very big assignment with this season,' Feldman said. 'How are we turning the corner into our next chapter?' His answer: 'An expansion and continuation of what I think we do best at the Playhouse,' which is to think about the presentation of art and theater through a California lens. Feldman said that with it being the state theater, he feels a unique responsibility to ensure that the work presented on the Playhouse stage engages with the world — but that it is also theater for everyone. 'What I love about this year is that it really is the full spectrum,' Feldman said. 'Comedies and tragedies and musicals and plays — old things and new things and kids' things.' For tickets and additional information about the upcoming season, go to
Los Angeles Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Ibsen's 1879 play left audiences shocked. Now in Pasadena, the door opens to ‘A Doll's House, Part 2'
In 'A Doll's House, Part 2,' playwright Lucas Hnath cheekily proposes an answer to a question that has haunted the theater for more than a century: Whatever happened to Nora after she walked out on her marriage at the end of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 drama, 'A Doll's House'? The door slam that concludes Ibsen's play ushered in a revolution in modern drama. After Nora's exit, anything was possible on the stages of respectable European playhouses. Conventional morality was no longer a choke hold on dramatic characters, who were allowed to set dangerous new precedents for audiences that may have been easily shocked but were by no means easily deterred. 'A Doll's House, Part 2,' which opened Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Jennifer Chang, is a sequel with a puckish difference. Although ostensibly set 15 years after Nora stormed out on Torvald and her three children, the play takes place in a theatrical present that has one antique-looking shoe in the late 19th century and one whimsical sneaker in the early 21st. The hybrid nature of 'A Doll's House, Part 2' isn't just reflected in the costume design. The language of the play moves freely from the declamatory to the profane, with some of its funniest moments occurring when fury impels a character to unleash some naughty modern vernacular. More crucially, comedy and tragedy are allowed to coexist as parallel realities. Hnath has constructed 'A Doll's House, Part 2' as a modern comedy of ideas, divided into a series of confrontations in which characters get to thrash out different perspectives on their shared history. Chang stages the play like a courtroom drama, with a portion of the audience seated on the stage like a jury. The spare (if too dour) set by Wilson Chin, featuring the door that Nora made famous and a couple of rearranged chairs, allows for the brisk transit of testimony in a drama that lets all four characters have their say. Nora (played with a touch too much comic affectation by Elizabeth Reaser) has become a successful author of controversial women's books espousing radical ideas about the trap of conventional marriage. She has returned to the scene of her domestic crime out of necessity. Torvald (portrayed with compelling inwardness by Jason Butler Harner), her stolid former husband, never filed the divorce papers. She's now in legal jeopardy, having conducted business as an unmarried woman. And her militant feminist views have won her enemies who would like nothing more than to send her to prison. Nora needs Torvald to do what he was supposed to have done years ago: officially end their marriage. But not knowing how he might react to her reemergence, she makes arrangements to strategize privately with Anne Marie (Kimberly Scott), the old nanny who raised Nora's children in her absence and isn't particularly inclined to do her any favors. After Torvald and Anne Marie both refuse to cooperate with her, Nora has no choice but to turn to her daughter, Emmy (crisply played by Kahyun Kim). Recently engaged to a young banker, Emmy has chosen the road that her mother abandoned, a distressing realization for Nora, who had hoped that her example would have inaugurated a new era of possibility for women. Hnath works out the puzzle of Nora's dilemma as though it were a dramatic Rubik's Cube. The play hasn't any ax to grind. If there's one prevailing truth, it's that relationships are murkier and messier than ideological arguments. Nora restates why she left her marriage and explains as best she can the reasons she stayed away from her children all these years. But her actions, however necessary, left behind a tonnage of human wreckage. 'A Doll's House, Part 2' offers a complex moral accounting. As each character's forcefully held view is added to the ledger sheet, suspense builds over how the playwright will balance the books. Each new production of 'A Doll's House, Part 2' works out the math in a slightly different way. The play had its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in 2017 in an elegant production that was somewhat more somber than the Broadway production that opened shortly after and earned Laurie Metcalf a well-deserved Tony for her performance. The play found its voice through the Broadway developmental process, and Metcalf's imprint is unmistakable in the rhythms of Nora's whirligig monologues and bracing retorts. Metcalf is the rare actor who can lunge after comedy without sacrificing the raw poignancy of her character. Reaser adopts a humorous mode but it feels forced. More damagingly, it doesn't seem as if Hnath's Nora has evolved all that much from the skittishly coquettish wife of Ibsen's play. The intellectual arc of 'A Doll's House, Part 2' suffers from the mincing way Reaser introduces the character, with little conviction for Nora's feminist principles and only a superficial sense of the long, exhausting road of being born before your time. The early moments with Scott's Anne Marie are unsteady. Reaser's Nora comes off as a shallow woman oblivious of her privilege, which is true but only partly so. Scott has a wonderful earthy quality, but I missed the impeccable timing of Jayne Houdyshell's Anne Marie, who could stop the show with an anachronistic F-bomb. Chang's staging initially seems like a work-in-progress. The production is galvanized by the excellent performances of Harner and Kim. Harner reveals a Torvald changed by time and self-doubt. Years of solitude, sharpened by intimations of mortality, have cracked the banker's sense of certainty. He blames Nora for the hurt he'll never get over, but he doesn't want to go down as the paragon of bad husbands. He too would like a chance to redeem himself, even if (as Harner's canny performance illustrates) character is not infinitely malleable. Bad habits endure. Kim's Emmy holds her own against Nora even as her proposed solution to her mother's dilemma involves some questionable ethics. Nora may be disappointed that her daughter is making such conformist choices, but Emmy sees no reason why the mother she never knew should feel entitled to shape her life. The brusquely controlled way Kim's Emmy speaks to Nora hints at the ocean of unresolved feelings between them. The production is somewhat hampered by Anthony Tran's cumbersome costumes and Chin's grimly rational scenic design. Elizabeth Harper's lighting enlivens the dull palette, but I missed the surreal notes of the South Coast Repertory and Broadway stagings. Hnath creates his own universe, and the design choices should reflect this wonderland quality to a jauntier degree. But Chang realizes the play's full power in the final scene between Nora and Torvald. Reaser poignantly plunges the depths of her character, as estranged husband and wife share what the last 15 years have been like for them. 'A Doll's House' was considered in its time to be politically incendiary. Hnath's sequel, without squelching the politics, picks up the forgotten human story of Ibsen's indelible classic.
Los Angeles Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Parents, rejoice! Pasadena Playhouse provides childcare during a show: L.A. arts and culture this week
I was unreasonably elated to discover that the Pasadena Playhouse is test-driving a program that offers Saturday childcare during the May 24 matinee of 'A Dolls House, Part 2,' starring Jason Butler Harner and Elizabeth Reaser. The program is open to kids 5 to 12 and offers theater-based activities inspired by the play and led by Playhouse teaching artists. The cost is $20 per child — far less than what a parent would pay for a sitter for the afternoon — and the group fun takes place on site while parents watch the show. Here's hoping more theaters develop similar programs. For so many parents, childcare is the No. 1 barrier to attending live shows and cultural events. A good sitter will set you back $15 to $25 per hour, plus tip. Add the cost of tickets, parking and even a modest dinner out, and a night on the town easily soars past $300. Pasadena Playhouse is suited to hold such a program since it already runs youth theater classes and has a wonderful group of artists who regularly teach children. (Full disclosure: My daughter attends these classes.) But I can imagine a world in which other theaters, classical music groups and dance troupes begin offering similar programs. They would pay dividends in ticket sales and patron loyalty. There is no more grateful a human than a parent given a much-needed break. I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt. I came for the childcare and stayed for the show. Here's this week's roundup of arts news. With opening-weekend crowds behind us, now is an excellent time to experience Jeffrey Gibson's show at the Broad museum, which Times contributor David Pagel noted in his recent profile has the Gibson artworks that wowed visitors at the 2024 Venice Biennale: 'a giant, stylized bird, festooned with thousands of glistening beads; a laser-sharp painting, composed of up to 290 supersaturated colors; an array of lavishly patterned flags, from places no one has ever visited; or an evocative phrase, lifted from a novel, a pop song, a poem or a document, such as the U.S. Constitution.' Note that the museum, usually free, is staging this as a special exhibition with admission of $15. Through Sept. 28, closed Mondays. The Broad, 221 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Writer Susan King started a 2019 L.A. Times article with this great lede: Robert Townsend, the acclaimed director of such films as 1987's 'Hollywood Shuffle' and 1991's 'The Five Heartbeats,' got his start in the biz as a teenager with a one-line role in the 1975 African American teen dramedy 'Cooley High.' 'The movie changed my life,' recalled Townsend in a recent interview. 'I remember after I made the movie and it finally premiered in the theater in downtown Chicago, I started to cry. It was like this is my life. ... [Director] Michael Schultz really changed the landscape of cinema for people of color. He was the first one to paint with that brush of truly being human. We had never seen a movie where there was a young Black man talking about that he wanted to be a writer.' On Monday, you'll have the chance to see 'Cooley High' on the big screen. The event at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood includes a Q&A with Schultz and actors Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, moderated by Townsend. 7:30 p.m. Monday, Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. The nonprofit Printed Matter returns with the eighth installment of its fair, which has drawn tens of thousands of fans with booths selling limited-edition prints, handcrafted artist books and obscure titles by small presses. (For a visual sampler, check out Carolina A. Miranda's amusing photo tour from years ago.) The celebration, formerly held at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary, this year moves to ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Although the location is different, much of the programming will be the same, including live music performances and the discussion series 'The Classroom.' 6-9 p.m. Thursday, 1-7 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday (first two hours Sunday is a mask-required period). ArtCenter South Campus, 870 and 950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. The only two surviving buildings from Terminal Island's days as a thriving Japanese American fishing village in the early 1900s have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2025 list of America's 11 most endangered historic places. The buildings are in danger of being razed by the Port of Los Angeles, and the hope is that the visibility afforded by the list will help preservation efforts. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Terminal Island was the first place from which Japanese Americans were uprooted and sent to government camps such as Manzanar in the Owens Valley. The Trump administration is attempting to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts in its latest budget proposal, and the NEA recently sent a wave of letters to arts organizations across the country canceling grants. Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, South Coast Repertory, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Industry and L.A. Theatre Works are just some of SoCal nonprofits that got the bad news last week. The loss of this longstanding funding has left many organizations scrambling. Features columnist Todd Martens participated in the fourth Immersive Invitational, an interactive theater experience that gives participating companies 48 hours to create a 10-minute production and perform it multiple times on the event's final day. 'With the limited time frame, participating theater crews have to quickly establish a place and a sense of purpose, lending the audience, which must immediately contort to their role as actors, a call to action,' writes Martens of the fast-paced and joyful proceedings. The latest show at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is from an artist who has long been compelled by the visible and invisible labor of immigrant communities. Times contributor Tara Anne Dalbow notes how Castillo's work draws attention to the workers responsible for building construction, maintenance and repair. 'Beneath the facade of every home, school, business and community center lie layers of material meaning and memory that bear forth records of the minds and hands that envisioned and assembled them,' Dalbow writes. Wednesdays-Sundays through Aug. 31. ICA LA, 1717 E. 7th St., L.A. South Coast Repertory announced a 2025-26 season lineup that includes Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' and Yasmina's Reza's 'God of Carnage,' running from late January to March in rotating repertory. The season opens this September with the jukebox musical 'Million Dollar Quartet,' featuring the music of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. That's followed by the Lloyd Suh play 'The Heart Sellers,' about the chance connection between two immigrant women, one Filipino and one Korean, preparing a Thanksgiving meal. Also on the schedule: SCR's 'A Christmas Carol' tradition, carried on for the 45th year; the Karen Zacarias musical 'Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale,' part of the Theatre for Young Audiences and Families programming; two world premieres opening in April, 'Fremont Ave.' by Reggie D. White and a second title to be announced later; and 'Hershey Felder, Beethoven,' in June 2026, and the one-night-only 'Hershey Felder's Great American Songbook Sing-Along,' on June 14, 2026. More details and production dates are at Los Angeles Youth Orchestra is holding auditions for new members on Saturday and Sunday at First Presbyterian Church, 4963 Balboa Blvd., Encino. Applicants must have had at least two years of private instruction on their instrument. LAYO has more than 100 student musicians from more 50 schools in the region. The National Children's Chorus under Artistic Director Luke McEndarfer has partnered with Compton Unified School District in establishing scholarship-funded vocal training classes at Compton High School. The classes, which began this semester, take place three times per week and include ensemble singing, vocal technique, music theory, sight-singing and performance practice. Leave it to Baltimore to stage the absurdly fun Kinetic Sculpture Race, hosted by the American Visionary Art Museum. This year's 25th anniversary event featured a massive pink dog sculpture, 'Fifi,' that was part of a group of wild creations to be pushed, biked and otherwise maneuvered on a 15-mile long race track. — Jessica Gelt The president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago is taking time off while the museum investigates a news report that he began stripping off his clothes on a flight from Chicago to Munich after drinking alcohol and taking prescription meds.
Time of India
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Ruth Buzzi, legendary comedian and Scowling Lady from 'Laugh-In', passes away at 88
Comic actress Ruth Buzzi , who made millions laugh with her unforgettable role as the stern handbag-swinging Gladys Ormphby on 'Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In ', has passed away at the age of breathed her last peacefully on Thursday at her ranch near Fort Worth, Texas, after living with Alzheimer's disease for over 10 years, as confirmed by her long-time agent, Mike Eisenstadt. 'Her husband of almost 48 years, Kent Perkins, expressed to me that she was making people laugh just a few days ago,' Eisenstadt said in an email to Reuters. Ruth Ann Buzzi was born on 24 July 1936 in Westerly, Rhode Island, and raised in Stonington, Connecticut. She had her heart set on acting from a young age. Straight after school, she packed her bags and moved to California to train at the Pasadena Playhouse for the Performing Arts. While studying there, she crossed paths with future greats like Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman , who were also sharpening their craft at the same time. Rising Through the Ranks by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Secure Your Child's Future with Strong English Fluency Planet Spark Learn More Undo Before becoming a household name, Buzzi honed her skills in comedy revues and small television roles. She appeared on 'The Garry Moore Show' in 1964, catching attention with her sharp comedic timing. She also took to the stage in the original Broadway run of 'Sweet Charity' in 1966, playing alongside Gwen Verdon . This helped launch her into the mainstream, where her unique blend of physical comedy and quirky characters made her stand out. Making History on 'Laugh-In' Ruth Buzzi found fame and national love in 1968 when she joined the cast of 'Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In' – a fast-paced, zany sketch comedy show on NBC. She was the only cast member to appear in every episode until the show ended in 1973. Her most famous character, Gladys Ormphby, became an icon. Dressed in a brown dress, tight hairnet, and forever scowling, Gladys sat on a park bench and fought off the cheeky advances of Arte Johnson 's creepy old man character by whacking him with her handbag. It was comedy gold, and viewers adored it.
