Alden Ehrenreich should be tired. He’s just returned from Italy after about three months of filming across Europe. He’s off to the Philippines for his next film tomorrow. But as he sits under a blooming citrus tree at the entrance of his new theater, he’s overcome with energy. He could rhapsodize about live theater for hours if you let him.
The actor, who starred in his first film — Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro” — while still in high school, just wants to play.
After more than a decade in the industry, he longed to find a space to do just that. He yearned for the uninhibited artistic exploration of his late teens and early 20s when he was a part of theater groups with friends.
“That sense of freedom and play is kind of our birthright. It’s innate to us,” he said. “It’s sort of artists’ job, in a way, to fight for and protect that freedom.”
So he bought a historic substation in Cypress Park, determined to make it an artistic hub where he and others could get back to youthful creativity that’s often “quelled” by industry expectations, Ehrenreich said. Huron Station Playhouse, which celebrated its soft opening last fall, has become his “pride and joy.”
The L.A. native had a marathon year in 2023 — appearing in “Cocaine Bear,” “Fair Play,” best picture winner “Oppenheimer” and writing, directing and starring in the short film “Shadow Brother Sunday” — and he’s not slowing down anytime soon.
In just a few months, he’ll appear in Disney+’s Marvel miniseries “Ironheart.” He says he not only loved his character, but his collaborators too. He’s also set to star opposite fellow “Star Wars” alum Daisy Ridley in “The Last Resort,” appear in the horror film “Weapons” and star alongside Helen Mirren in “Switzerland,” an adaptation of the play by the same name.
With a strenuous work and travel schedule, Ehrenreich said he felt the need for an artistic home base. When he came across a building that predates the Hollywood sign, he knew he found the perfect space to reinvigorate himself and other Angeleno artists.
“This has been extremely helpful for me, just psychologically,” he said.
“You end up living this very itinerant existence. And this,” he said, motioning to the blades of grass outside the theater’s entrance he’d been fiddling with while speaking, “could not be more, not that. To be able to put love and attention and growth into something that continues to be there is really helpful.”
Ehrenreich wanted a place where art could be produced without the pressure of commercial success.
“What business does, understandably, is focus on results. ‘How much money is this going to make? Who’s going to see it? Blah, blah, blah.’ And when you’re focused on results, you can’t really play because every gesture, every move that you make has this baggage on top of it,” he said. “The true magic and joy of these things doesn’t always survive the infrastructure of the business side.”
That being said, Ehrenreich has appeared in a number of big-budget projects that were subject to that commercial pressure, including his starring role as Han Solo in the 2018 “Star Wars” prequel, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which underperformed at the box office. But he appreciates both the major studio production side of his resume and the theater side.
“It’s harder than it’s ever been nowadays to only do one [genre or style] for a lot of different reasons,” he said. “The most important thing is that you still get to use the muscle of the thing that you really care the most about. It also is possible in some of those commercial environments, when it’s helmed by somebody who has a really personal vision, for those things to be genuinely creative.”
Another part of his mission to “reenvision L.A. as a theater city” is to make Huron Station Playhouse a watering hole for artists. After play readings last fall that launched the theater, cast members and theatergoers mingled and conversed on the patio outside the building. Ehrenreich said this is a crucial part of how he hopes the Playhouse will establish a collaborative artistic community in what can often feel like an isolated city.
“A lot of actors only meet each other at parties thrown by Hollywood entities, agencies or companies. I could meet someone who’s the most exciting artist to me in the world. The conversation we’re gonna have there is not gonna lead to the great American novel. It’s just not,” he said. “I just always felt kind of hungry for that. And I think in L.A., it has to be a little bit more of a fight to carve out that ground.”
When he began searching for commercial real estate in L.A., Ehrenreich said this was the first place that came up on Google. The same person who, years earlier, had performed in original plays — written by friends — under a construction light in an abandoned house, had finally found a permanent space to forge the theatrical hub he’d been dreaming of for his hometown. He got the keys to the Huron Substation in 2021.
The Huron Substation was built in 1906 in Cypress Park to convert the Los Angeles Railway Yellow Cars to a higher voltage. A relic in a town where not much is over a century old, the building still maintains the original brickwork, although some spots bear the remnants of a fire in the ‘80s.
The 45-foot ceiling and exposed wood beams would be the stars of the space if it weren’t for the giant chandelier lighting the main floor.
Ehrenreich brought in furniture and decor with the help of his mom, interior designer Sari Ehrenreich. Much of the building was well maintained and didn’t require much work, but they added a restroom by the entrance where Ehrenreich and his collaborators got creative, crafting an intricate tile design on the floor and installing antique lamps from an old department store.
A spacious mezzanine sits above the stage and seating area and it will function as a shared workspace for artists. Ehrenreich envisions a place where writers can ask peers for help with a script or toss around pitches and workshop ideas in a safe and welcoming environment.
Downstairs, there is no fixed stage so directors can choose where the audience will be in relation to the actors. The close proximity between performers and patrons creates a sense of intimacy that’s difficult to replicate, said Julie Cohn, the executive director of Huron Station Playhouse.
“There’s an electricity, first of all, being in a space like this, but an electricity in being this close to an actor who is really going through something right in front of you,” Cohn said. “Nothing is polished about it, it’s super raw and really electric in a way that not only I’ve missed, but I think everyone has missed.”
Those who attended the first performances at the theater — readings of the plays “Gloria,” “Intimate Apparel,” “Cock” and “You Got Older” — were treated to a unique experience with cast members, including Stephanie Hsu, Alia Shawkat, Chris Perfetti and Ehrenreich.
The readings were sold out weeks in advance. While that early buzz was exciting for Ehrenreich and his team at the Playhouse, he said it also validated his theory that Angelenos were just as hungry as he was for an intimate style of theater like the rich off-Broadway scene in New York.
“I definitely feel that need for people to be together. I need it,” he said. “I’m the audience member that I’m trying to speak to in certain ways.”
All of this ties back to Ehrenreich’s deeply rooted love for theater. He is a true student of the arts, rattling off actors he admires and recommending a biography he’s currently reading on director Mike Nichols.
Ehrenreich’s first performance in a play — a production of “Our Town” in which he played George and had his first kiss at age 13 — lit a fire under him. When he lived in New York, he saw an off-Broadway production of the show seven times. “That play has a certain magic to it about appreciating life, as we’re living it, that still completely bowls me over,” he said.
But don’t expect to see Thornton Wilder‘s 1938 Pulitzer Prize winner at Huron Station Playhouse. Ehrenreich and Cohn agreed they’d focus on contemporary plays at the start of the theater’s life, straying away from classics or abstract titles.
Ehrenreich said he wants to spotlight material that even non-theater buffs will appreciate and connect with, and highlight strong characters to inspire moving performances.
The next reading will come at the end of May for the play “Killing and Dying,” directed by Tony nominee Anne Kauffman and co-produced by Ari Aster’s production company, Square Peg. Next, screenwriting and playwriting circles will kick off, and the Playhouse team plans to ramp up other programming for young artists. Between movie and TV shoots, Ehrenreich hopes to take a seat in the director’s chair for a reading himself.
While Ehrenreich could — and gladly would — speak about the theater’s goals and his dreams for the space at length, he and the crew at Huron Station Playhouse seem to sum it up perfectly in the “house values” posted outside the entrance, just below the plaque designating the site an L.A. historic cultural monument. Those values are: Be present. Have fun. Treat every person with kindness and respect. Give it all you got.
And lastly — believe in art.
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