Pasadena Playhouse

The Pasadena Playhouse is a theater in Pasadena, near Los Angeles in California. It was designed and built by the architect Elmer Grey, A. Dwight Gibbs and Cyril Bennett. The auditorium has 686 seats. The theater shows mainly self-produced plays and musicals.

History

Since about 1912, the " Little Theatre Movement" developed in the United States (Movement for small theater) in cities and towns. The ensemble, later for the Pasadena Playhouse was built, can be traced back to the year 1916, when the actor and director Gilmor Brown began, with his group, The Gilmore Brown player to produce a series of plays in a renovated burlesque theater. Brown founded 1917, the Community Playhouse Association of Pasadena. This amateur theater group grew rapidly, and so began in May 1924, the construction of the theater at the 39 South El Molino Avenue. The theater was completed in 1925. The theater was designed in the style of Spanish Colonial Revival of the artist and architect Elmer Grey. In 1937, the Playhouse by Parliament, California was named the official state theater of California, after having shown the first theaters in the country, all dramas of Shakespeare on its stage.

A drama school was founded in the late 1920s, which in 1937 became recognized as an accredited college. There have studied some prominent actors, including Raymond Burr, Victor Mature, Ernest Borgnine, Eleanor Parker, Charles Bronson, Makoto Iwamatsu, Jamie Farr, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Sally Struthers.

Due to changes in legislation and the opening of drama departments in many schools and universities across the country, the school was closed in 1969. Later that year, after the death of Gilmor Brown, the theater itself went bankrupt.

1986 could be re-opened the Pasadena Playhouse as a community theater. Over the next 20 years the theater staged classical and contemporary plays and musicals.

Known students

Pasadena, California John Alvin (actor) William "Bill" Henry Wayne Morris (American actor) Robert Preston (actor) Robert Taylor (actor)
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