SANTA MONICA PLAYHOUSE

The magic of live theatre - entertaining, enlightening, educational - is what Santa Monica Playhouse and its award-winning resident company, Actors' Repertory Theatre (ART), are all about. One of the country's most respected intimate theatrical centers, the Playhouse is the only company of its kind to have produced non-stop for over half a century. Under the aegis of Chris DeCarlo and Evelyn Rudie, Co-Artistic Directors since 1973, the Playhouse has been honored with over 250 awards and commendations and has presented 600 dynamic classic, contemporary and original productions.
The Playhouse is staffed by a small troupe of professional performers who, in addition to their acting duties, wear a variety of hats, including composer, lyricist, playwright, director, costume and set designer, computer analyst and conservatory teacher. These dedicated artists have made an enormous impact on the local and global community, touching the lives of 5 million audience members, 3/4 a million students and educators both on-site and in the school system, ¼ of a million scholarship and under-served students, 5000 performers, new playwrights, and theatre artists and nearly half a million international audience members, artists and students through more than 50 cultural exchanges.
With two performance spaces at their jewel of a theatre complex on Fourth Street in the heart of Santa Monica, the company brings to brilliant life our rich heritage of playwrights, from Moliere to Strindberg, from Shakespeare to Sholom Aleichem. Famed playwright Eugene Ionesco gave the company his highest praise, acclaiming their work “Magnifique!” In addition to its resident company, the Playhouse has hosted such renowned performers as George Segal, Ed Asner, Mark Rydell, Paul Linke, Stuart Pankin, Louise Sorell, Rae Dawn Chong, William Schallert, Sammy Shore, Renee Taylor, Joe Bologna and Julie Harris, Stogie Kenyatta, directors Mark W. Travis and Martin Charnin, and playwrights Arnold Schulman, Jerry Mayer, Annie Reiner, Brenda Krantz, Australia's David Williamson and Canada's Michel Garneau.
The Playhouse concept of self- and community-awareness through drama has generated a powerful international exchange with sister companies in Japan, England, Ireland, Italy, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Sweden, Alaska and New York. Senator Kyoko Ono of Japan's House of Councilors calls the Playhouse's Cultural Exchange Program “more than an education experience, it blazes a trail of peace and friendship between our two nations.”
The LA TIMES is not exaggerating when it calls Santa Monica Playhouse “A total theater experience.” With critically acclaimed productions, pioneering advances in educational theatre, and international tours, this theatrical gem continues its battle to raise cultural consciousness and fight for the survival and growth of the creative process, reaching out to make live, intimate theatre an active force in our community. Co-Artistic Director Chris DeCarlo, a Vietnam veteran, says his experiences convinced him that his mandate was to put the human back in humanity. “All of us at the Playhouse,” he says, “want to make a dramatic difference in our world.”