after 97 years,(!!) the PASADENA PLAYHOUSE is closing it's doors.
besides being a cultural and architectural landmark, i have personal memories of attending performances at the playhouse throughout the years. i remember the production of~
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST with a then washed-up post-teen actor named patrick dempsey..
i also remember running into him at the local rotisserie and thinking," that guy is dreamy." this was over 10 years ago....
but i digress.
i want you readers to understand the gravity of this closure- one of LA reigning cultural centers... if the PP can shut down after 97 years... nothing is safe.
please read the full story by mike boehm of the LAtimes-
The Pasadena Playhouse will close Feb. 7 after the final performance of its current production of "Camelot," leaving its future in jeopardy as company leaders explore ways out of its financial woes, including a possible bankruptcy filing.
Stephen Eich, the executive director hired last June to run the theater, said 37 employees learned at a staff meeting Thursday that they would be out of work. The playhouse is essentially out of cash to continue running, he said, and faces more than $500,000 in immediate bills, plus more than $1.5 million owed on bank loans and other debts that have dogged the nonprofit company since the mid-1990s.
Founded in 1917, the Playhouse was designated in 1937 as the state theater of California.
Eich said that tapping into about $6 million donated for a capital campaign to refurbish the playhouse was not an option. "It just would not be any way for us to solve the problems of the place. Those monies are restricted for the building."
Instead, he said, he and longtime artistic director Sheldon Epps and the playhouse's board will try to come up with a plan to set the company on its feet, rather than try to keep it going on the hand-to-mouth basis that became impossible as a down economy took a toll on donations.
Asked the playhouse's chances of surviving a shutdown, Eich said, "There is an unequivocal desire for the playhouse to survive. It seems to me that for that to occur, our position in the community needs to be redefined as it relates to the city and the funding community. Work needs to be done."
Eich said the playhouse had pinned its hopes on finding a donor who would give $5 million to have the 684-seat main stage named in his or her honor, but that never materialized.
The Playhouse's financial problems surfaced in late September, when it closed a show a week early to save expenses -- "The Night of the Child," a drama by Charles Randolph-Wright that starred Jo-Beth Williams as a woman trying to recover from a family tragedy.
Eich said at the time that four employees had been laid off, and that the playhouse needed donations of more than $1 million by year's end to cover up to $600,000 in bills and create a cushion as it headed into the 2010 season. The playhouse also quietly scaled back its season. The playhouse made its name nationally starting in the late 1920s, when, in addition to staging plays, it was home to a university-level theater training program that also featured a branch operation in New York City. Nick Nolte, Charles Bronson, Robert Young, Raymond Burr, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Sally Struthers were among its students or staff members
The nation's economic woes came at a time when the playhouse had been focusing some of its planning and fundraising energy on visions of bigger things. In 2007 it had announced that architect Frank Gehry was donating his services to design a new, 300- to 400-seat theater to augment the main stage, a 684-seat house in the Spanish colonial building that's a California historical landmark. Before tackling that larger project, Gehry was going to redo the existing second stage, the 86-seat Carrie Hamilton Theatre. It's named in memory of the actress daughter of playhouse board member Carol Burnett (Hamilton died of cancer in 2002), and has been home to the Furious Theatre Co., whose leader, Damaso Rodriguez, is associate artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse.
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mike.boehm@latimes.com
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