{"id":5240,"date":"2011-03-03T21:11:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T21:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/it-s-not-just-your-grandfather-s-long-beach-playhouse-anymore-3\/"},"modified":"2011-03-03T21:11:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T21:11:00","slug":"it-s-not-just-your-grandfather-s-long-beach-playhouse-anymore-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/it-s-not-just-your-grandfather-s-long-beach-playhouse-anymore-3","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not (Just) Your Grandfather’s Long Beach Playhouse Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

5:15pm |<\/strong> Once upon a time, early in my tenure as theatre reviewer for The District Weekly,<\/em> I contacted Long Beach Playhouse about reviewing a show. But I didn’t hear back. I followed up with a phone call: no reply. Finally, in response to a third attempt, I received a one-line e-mail shot across the bow: “We would prefer not to be reviewed by The District Weekly<\/em>.”1<\/sup><\/p>\n

In the midst of our sit-down for this piece, I relate this story to Artistic Director Andrew Vonderschmitt and Managing Director Lauren Morris, and they are shocked and horrified, pretty much unable to comprehend how such a thing could happen. <\/p>\n

But this wasn’t on their watch, and this was before the Playhouse had a full staff. Things have changed at Long Beach’s oldest theatre company \u2014 and not only in terms of how the alternative press is regarded. <\/p>\n

“One of the biggest shifts is this professional staff that’s come on in these last two years,” says Morris. <\/p>\n

Jokes Vonderschmitt, “We are like a real theatre now.” <\/p>\n

That new reality includes new artistic vistas growing beyond the Playhouse’s former horizons, which in recent times extended little farther than farce and mainstream fare. It’s a shift that Vonderschmitt says “has been a long time coming. \u2026 The change in the arts community, the change in our demographics \u2014 the community in general has not been reflected by the Playhouse in years past.”<\/p>\n

After my initial encounter with LB Playhouse, it pretty much fell off my radar. But it was when I saw a call for auditions for their recent production of The Lieutenant of Innishmore<\/em> \u2014 a gory, murderous Martin McDonagh comedy that is a far cry from the Noel Coward-type work on which the Playhouse has focused \u2014 that I thought I ought to take another look, both at what’s going on onstage (see my review here<\/a>) and behind the scenes. And the change is plain to see, whether the vision we’re talking about is artistic or regarding the community at large.<\/p>\n

Even before lucking into the job as the Playhouse’s technical director,2<\/sup> Vonderschmitt had long disliked what he calls the “us and them” antagonism between theatre companies. And so when he became the Playhouse’s artistic director in mid 2009, Vonderschimitt looked to buck the status quo. <\/p>\n

“Every collaboration that’s come our way we’ve explored to see if we can do it, because we want to be part of the whole community in general,” he says. <\/p>\n

To that end, the Long Beach Playhouse is a member of the Long Beach Theatre Arts Collaborative, “a bunch of theaters getting together and talking about, ‘Hey, how can we share our resources? Can we market together? Can we do a collaboration?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was right around that time that Alive Theatre’s Jeremy Aluma approached the Playhouse about doing Four Clowns<\/em>, a show he enjoyed much success with during its initial run in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n

“We jumped on that immediately,” Vonderschmitt says.<\/p>\n

“For me, collaboration is the key to the survival of the arts,” says Morris, who landed the managing director job a mere five days after graduating from Cal State Long Beach’s Theatre Management program. <\/p>\n

(“God brought Lauren to us,” Vonderschmitt says with a laugh.) <\/p>\n

“We’ve all struggled, and if we band together, we’ll be stronger. And I think the best art also comes out of collaboration,\u201d she continues. \u201cTheatre is collaborative to begin with, so that’s kind of how we know how to work anyway, and so it just makes sense to me that if we have this great asset, it doesn’t make sense for the Long Beach Playhouse to put on 16 shows a year when you have people like the Alive [Theatre company] who don’t have a place to perform, [and] who are doing amazing and exciting work and who are connected to that community we want to connect to, it doesn’t make sense not to bring them in.”<\/p>\n

Vonderschimitt points to the Playhouse’s mission statement:<\/p>\n

\n

To nurture and cultivate new and traditional audiences, as well as emerging and established artists: encourage the participation of all interested individuals: maintain a strong theater training program and produce quality theater which includes traditional plays and classics, new works and thought-provoking, socially significant productions, and is accessible to our socially and economically diverse community.
<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“One of the lines I always go back to is: ‘encourage the participation of all interested individuals.’ That’s the part that got me,” he relates. “That means that anybody who wants to be involved here should get an opportunity to be involved in some way or another.”<\/p>\n

Such involvement means going beyond theatre \u2014 and that’s just where the Playhouse is going. In addition to their curated gallery space featuring local artists, Morris says they are “in a full-court press right now on a lot of different fronts.” <\/p>\n

Those fronts include Studio Nights (a Sunday evening opportunity for artists of all stripes to perform for each other), yoga classes, a storytelling collaboration with the Long Beach Public Library centering around the “Long Beach Reads One Book” program and a memoir-writing workshop. <\/p>\n

Vonderschmitt says they’re even aiming at an ongoing adult-education series. “The idea is that people can get more than just theatre from us.” <\/p>\n

“We are trying to listen to the opportunities that are presenting themselves,” explains Morris, “[and] we need to be agile enough to respond. [For example,] it’s so hard to start out as a new artistic company. So if we can be an incubator for those and offer them a leg up \u2026 that’s awesome. That’s what inspires me.”<\/p>\n

Of course, Long Beach Playhouse is, first and foremost, a theatre company. And the changes on this front are just as fresh. <\/p>\n

“We have two stages, so we have that awesome ability to serve two different fares,” says Vonderschmitt. “Our base audience \u2026 loves to see farce; and there’s definitely a place for that. But in 1967 the Studio Theatre was built for the purpose of doing contemporary plays, of doing new works, of doing thought-provoking, kind of cutting-edge stuff \u2014 which they did for many years. <\/p>\n

\u201cSomehow along the way (this started happening the early ’90s), they ventured away from that and started doing upstairs the same fare they were doing downstairs. So you could see Of Mice and Men<\/em> downstairs and Little Women<\/em> upstairs on the same weekend. There was no diversification at all, [so] there was no purpose for having a second stage. [Plus,] it was taking away from what the main stage is. \u2026 Now we’re making the Studio known to the community as a place they can see plays like The Lieutenant of Innishmore<\/em>, while downstairs you can still see things like The Importance of Being Earnes<\/em>t. That’s one of the most amazing things about working here.”<\/p>\n

Morris amplifies this theme: “Part of the characteristic of being an 82-year-old organization is that at some point you’re bound to say, ‘Oh, we’re really reflecting the past 50 years more than we’re reflecting the next 50.\u2019 \u2026 As an arts institution, I think it’s our job to create art that speaks to the people that come to see it. People want to see themselves reflected back at them. Art is a mirror only if you’re doing things that are relevant to the [audience]. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have a responsibility as a community of artists \u2014 particularly as the community theatre in this diverse city \u2014 to really reflect who this city is. \u2026 What we’re learning is that when we do<\/em> theatre that better reflects the community in the Studio, that young, edgy, artistic culture, they do want to support the arts, they do<\/em> come out for stuff like this. And they haven’t been coming to the Playhouse because we haven’t been doing things that speak to them. And we haven’t been marketing to them. \u2026 But when we do, and we do something like Innishmore<\/em>, it’s wildly successful. Innishmore<\/em> sold out a lot, and that was a big step forward for us upstairs. Now we’re hitting our stride. We’re doing stuff that the community is interested in, and we have proof that it works. That’s exciting.”<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Vonderschimitt and Morris want the Long Beach Playhouse to be part of a vanguard that ever more successfully brings the arts into the community and vice versa, moving the whole shebang ever forward. <\/p>\n

“Long Beach is at a tipping point,” Vonderschmitt says. “There’s something really unique happening here, and really special. Years from now people are going to look back at this couple of years and say, ‘This was a heyday of Long Beach.’ And we’re right in the middle of that.”<\/p>\n

Keep an eye on what’s happening at the Long Beach Playhouse, and look out for their next production, Four<\/em> Clowns<\/em> (“a physical, musical and emotional journey into what it means to be human”), which opens March 4 and runs Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. through March 19.  <\/p>\n

Footnotes<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n

1<\/sup>I ended up reviewing the show (Of Mice and Men<\/em>, which Steinbeck horribly adapted from his novel), anyway.
2<\/sup> In the middle of a 2007 performance run in which he was acting, his predecessor decided to quit and offered him the job. Vonderschmitt went on to become the Playhouse’s artistic director in mid 2009. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Disclosure: Long Beach Post publisher Shaun Lumachi is a member of the Long Beach Playhouse Board of Directors.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fresh leadership is breathing new life into the Long Beach Playhouse, where artistic vistas are growing beyond the Playhouse’s former horizons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}