The Pacific Repertory Theatre is a non-profit California corporation, based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, that produces theatrical productions and events, including the annual Carmel Shakespeare Festival. [1] It is one of eight major arts institutions in Monterey County, as designated by the Community Foundation of Monterey County, [2] and is supported in part by grants from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, [3] The Shubert Foundation, the Berkshire Foundation and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation. [4]
The company was founded in 1982 as GroveMont Theatre by Carmel-by-the-Sea resident Stephen Moorer, who served as its artistic director from 1983 to 2008, and its executive director since 2009. The organizational name changed to Pacific Repertory Theatre in 1994 when the company acquired the historic site of the Golden Bough Playhouse in downtown Carmel, and announced plans to establish a professional theatre for the region. In 2001, in order to facilitate an appearance by Olympia Dukakis and Louis Zorich in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, the company entered into a seasonal agreement with Actors' Equity Association. [5] [6] It thereby became the only professional theatre in Monterey County. [1]
The company gained wider attention for its series of Shakespeare plays entitled Royal Blood: The Rise and Fall of Kings. Over the course of several summers beginning in 2001, it presented all of Shakespeare's histories in chronological order. [7]
PacRep presents a year-round season of 10–12 plays and musicals in three historic Carmel theatres: The 300-seat Golden Bough Playhouse, the 120-seat Circle Theatre, and the 540-seat outdoor Forest Theater. The company presents over 175 performances each year. [4]
In 1984, Pacific Repertory Theatre joined the Forest Theater community. At the request of the Carmel Cultural Commission, the company began producing shows at the historic outdoor facility, staging Robinson Jeffers' Medea, starring local actress Rosamond Goodrich Zanides. [8] In 1990, the company reactivated the old Carmel Shake-speare Festival of the 1940s, playing in repertory at the Forest, Golden Bough, and Circle theatres, and adding the hyphen in "Shake-speare" to denote interest and support research into the growing Shakespeare Authorship Question. [9] Since that time, the company has continued to stage productions at the Forest Theater every September and October, expanding into August in 2000, when it became the only professional theater company in residence at the Forest Theater. [1] In 2011, following the closure of the 50-year-old Children's Experimental Theater, the City of Carmel awarded the year-round lease of the indoor Forest Theater to PacRep for its educational program, the School of Dramatic Arts. [10]
In early 2022, the city of Carmel entered into a lease with Pacific Repertory Theatre for the nonprofit to manage the venue for the next five years, with a five-year renewal option. [11] Under PacRep's management of the venue, the Forest Theater has presented shows by Puddles Pity Party, [12] the Monterey Symphony, [13] the Forest Theater Guild, [14] Monterey Peninsula College Theatre, [15] concert promoter Steve Vagnini, [16] as well as other arts organizations and civic events. [17]
In 2008, the PacRep Board of Directors named Kenneth Kelleher as artistic director, and founder Stephen Moorer was named executive director after serving as artistic director since 1982. Kelleher has been a theatre director in the San Francisco Bay area for many years, including at the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and Shakespeare at Stinson. [18] The 2009 season marked the first full season under Kelleher's artistic leadership. The season included a 14-member adaptation of Man of La Mancha, and the controversial David Hare play, The Blue Room, a frank look at sexual encounters based on La Ronde . Both productions were directed by Kelleher, who also assumed directorial duties for the season productions of Hamlet and As You Like It . [19]
Annual outreach programs include PacRep's School of Dramatic Arts (SoDA) and the Tix4Kids program that distributes subsidized theatre tickets to underserved youth. In addition, the company regularly participates in numerous community activities including regional parade, festivals and holiday events.
A repertory theatre, also called repertory,rep, true rep or stock, which are also called producing theatres, is a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation.
Carmel-by-the-Sea, often simply called Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history. In 1906, the San Francisco Call devoted a full page to the "artists, writers and poets at Carmel-by-the-Sea", and in 1910 it reported that 60 percent of Carmel's houses were built by citizens who were "devoting their lives to work connected to the aesthetic arts." Early City Councils were dominated by artists, and several of the city's mayors have been poets or actors, including Herbert Heron, founder of the Forest Theater, bohemian writer and actor Perry Newberry, and actor-director Clint Eastwood, who served as mayor from 1986 to 1988.
The San Jose Repertory Theatre was the first resident professional theatre company in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1980 by James P. Reber. In 2008, after the demise of the American Musical Theatre of San Jose, the San Jose Rep became the largest non-profit, professional theatre company in the South Bay with an annual operating budget of $5 million. In 2006, it was saved from impending insolvency by a $2 million bailout loan from the city of San Jose; this was later restructured into a long-term loan similar to a mortgage.
Elizabeth Rex is a play by Timothy Findley. It premiered in a 2000 production by the Stratford Festival. The play won the 2000 Governor General's Award for English language drama.
The Forest Theater is an historic amphitheater in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Founded in 1910, it is one of the oldest outdoor theaters west of the Rockies. Actor/director Herbert Heron is generally cited as the founder and driving force, and poet/novelist Mary Austin is often credited with suggesting the idea. As first envisioned, original works by California authors, children's theatre, and the plays of Shakespeare were the primary focus. Since its inception, a variety of artists and theatre groups have presented plays, pageants, musical offerings and other performances on the outdoor stage, and the facility's smaller indoor theatre and school.
Stephen Moorer is a stage actor, director, producer and non-profit administrator based on the Central California Coast. He founded the only year-round professional theatre in Monterey County, GroveMont Theatre in 1982, renaming the non-profit organization Pacific Repertory Theatre in 1994, when the group acquired the Golden Bough Playhouse in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Bill Rauch is an American theatre director. He was named the inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in 2018. Currently in development, the Perelman is the final piece of the plan to revitalize the World Trade Center site and will create work which inspires hope.
The Golden Bough Playhouse is a historic two-story theatre in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California on Monte Verde St., between 8th and 9th Avenues. The playhouse occupies the site of the former Carmel Arts and Crafts Club, Carmel's first cultural center and theatre, built in 1906–1907 on Casanova Street, and the Arts and Crafts Hall, built in 1923–1924 on an adjacent lot on Monte Verde Street. Since 1994, the facility has been owned and operated by Pacific Repertory Theatre, Monterey County's only year-round professional theatre company. A two-phase renovation of the aging facility began with an interior building project in 2011. A second phase project, including both interior and exterior renovations, is scheduled for 2021. The theatre was recorded with the National Register of Historic Places on July 3, 2002. It is significant as a California historic building because it is located on the original site of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club and theatre, the oldest performing arts venues in Carmel.
Larry Carpenter is an American theatre and television director and producer. In the theatre, he has worked as an artistic director, associate artistic director, a managing director and general manager in both the New York and Regional arenas. He also works as a theatre director and is known primarily for large projects, working on musicals and classical plays equally. In television, he works as a director for New York daytime dramas. He has served as executive vice president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the national labor union for professional stage directors and choreographers. He is also a member of the Directors Guild of America PAC.
Kansas City Repertory Theatre is a professional resident theater company serving the Kansas City metropolitan area, and is the professional theater in residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC).
Sharon Langston Ott is a director, producer and educator who worked in regional theaters and opera throughout the United States. Two plays she directed, A Fierce Longing and Amlin Gray's How I Got That Story, each won an Obie award after their New York runs.
The Theatre of the Golden Bough was located on Ocean Avenue in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. This "Golden Bough" was one of two theaters in Carmel's history. It was destroyed by fire on May 19, 1935. Kuster moved his film operation to the older facility on Monte Verde Street, renamed it the Filmarte and it became the first "art house" between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It later became the Golden Bough Playhouse that still exists today.
Ako, or Ako Dachs, is a Japanese actress and founding Artistic Director of Amaterasu Za theatre company.
Rick Lombardo is a prolific and award-winning American theatre director, playwright and adaptor. He is the former producing artistic director of San Jose Repertory Theatre, and the former Artistic Director of New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, Massachusetts. Lombardo is currently the artistic director of Penn State Center Stage, and the director of the School of Theatre at Penn State University and the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture.
Desdemona Chiang is a Taiwan-born American theatre director, and co-artistic director of Azeotrope in Seattle, Washington. Her directing credits include the Guthrie Theater, Alley Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Playmakers Repertory Company, and ACT Theatre. She directs in a variety of genres, including Shakespeare, new plays, and musicals.
The Sunset Center is located in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, United States. It is a performing arts center which features concerts, comedy, theatre, and dance. Formerly the Sunset School, the site was purchased by the city of Carmel in 1965 with the plan to develop it into a cultural center. It is home to the Carmel Bach Festival. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 9, 1998.
The Carmel Arts and Crafts Club was an art gallery, clubhouse founded in 1905, by Elsie Allen, a former art instructor for Wellesley College. The club was located at Monte Verde Street in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where the Golden Bough Playhouse is today. The clubhouse served as the Carmel community cultural center. It held dramatic performances, poetry readings, lectures, and was a summer school for the arts. Between 1919 and 1948 Carmel was the largest art colony on the Pacific coast.
Edward Gerhard Kuster was a musician and attorney from Los Angeles for twenty-one years before coming to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in 1921. He became involved in theater and establish his own theatre and school. He built the Theatre of the Golden Bough in 1924, and a second theater, the Golden Bough Playhouse in 1952. Kuster directed 85 plays and acted in more than 50 roles in the 35 years he lived in Carmel.
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