“Can you sound like you’re falling in love?”
Adam McDonald asks the question in earnest. He’s standing in front of a Yamaha keyboard, facing more than two dozen adults enrolled in “Playhouse Singers,” a Monday-night class at the historic Pasadena Playhouse. The group is preparing for a performance of musical theater staples, including Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “A Grand Night For Singing” from the musical “State Fair,” which features the lyric, “The earth is aglow, and to add to the show, I think I am falling in love.”
McDonald, the former music director of the touring production of “Wicked,” really wants the class to mean it. “At the very least, smile when you sing,” he says to his students. And they do. When they take up the song again, everyone is gooey with romance. This feeling — of being together, of making music, of learning new songs and performing — this is what the class came for.
Playhouse Singers is one of 14 classes offered at the Tony Award-winning regional theater as it expands its community-driven mission to build a bustling theater school serving up to 400 students per semester, including children as young as 4 years old, octogenarians in an Acting for Seniors class, and all ages in-between. The very first kid’s class was offered three years ago, and the program has more than doubled in size each year since, noted Playhouse education director Arie Levine, who helped conceive of the programming after being brought on board by the company’s producing artistic director Danny Feldman in 2021.
“Theater for Everyone” is the ever-expanding education department’s motto, and during a recent interview, Feldman wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words.
“Education is as core to us as the shows on stage,” said Feldman. “When we were making the bold choice of purchasing back this building, it wasn’t just about restoring an old theater.”
That’s because the Pasadena Playhouse — a Spanish Colonial Revival landmark built by architect Elmer Grey and opened in 1925 — was never just a theater. In 1927, founder Gilmor Brown started the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, which pioneered the kind of conservatory training that would become the hallmark of modern MFA theater programs by immersing students in the entirety of the profession including wardrobe, set building and acting. Major studios sent their silent film stars to the playhouse school to beef up their acting chops, and later students including Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Sally Struthers and Raymond Burr roamed the hallways.
The theater hit on hard times: The IRS padlocked the doors in the mid-1960s, the school itself shut down in 1969 and lost its campus to bankruptcy in 1970. It remained dark and derelict for nearly 20 years. When the building reopened under new ownership in 1986, Pasadena Playhouse did so as tenants renting space alongside various non-arts-related businesses — a situation that changed in April of this year when Feldman announced that the company paid $9.5 million to buy back the real estate . Now, the Playhouse is using 80% of the campus for theater initiatives — mostly mainstage productions and education, Feldman said.
By virtue of its reputation — freshly burnished in 2023 when it became only the second Los Angeles institution to win a Regional Tony Award — the playhouse has attracted a talented, highly qualified roster of teaching artists including McDonald and the Julliard School-trained actor Brandon Gill who teaches a class called Teen Acting Intensive, and recently starred in a mainstage production of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog / Underdog.” Gill asked to be added to the instructors’ roster after witnessing the joy of students on campus and also online as they posted to social media about their participation in the Junior Theater Festival in Sacramento.
“I love watching the light bulb go off, watching them be inspired,” Gill said. “I think art is the foundation for any career. It teaches you confidence. It teaches voice and speech and clarity, and how to present yourself in a room. All of these things are essential for developing minds.”
During a recent Monday night class of Theatermakers: Myths and Legends, for kids ages 11 to 15, teaching artist Sarah Mass helped her mostly middle-school-age students create their own performance piece based on folklore of their choice. During their first class they chose the legend of Baby Blue — a time-worn grade-school yarn about a ghost named Baby Blue who appears if you say her name three times in a row.
The students, wearing sweats, torn jeans and colorful, off-the-shoulder shirts, spitball ideas with Mass — they are excited and interested, and find ways to incorporate various random objects from the black box theater into their narrative.
“This is what I love — we’re using the space,” says Mass.
Over the course of eight weeks they will go beyond the black box and explore the many nooks and crannies of the century-old campus to create a 15-minute site-specific theater piece.
“I’ve taught a version of this class for years in different settings,” said Mass, who majored in theater at Boston College before going on to act professionally and teach at various schools, including the Old Globe in San Diego. “It’s developed into what I do anytime I’m given free rein to teach theater to kids.”
Feldman and Levine spent a year planning before they launched the first kids’ classes (full disclosure: my child participates in these classes). During that time they interviewed parents and teachers at local public and private schools to get a variety of perspectives on what the community was craving. Accessibility was also essential, and a scholarship fund was created that pays partial tuition for 20% of the spots in each class.
“We knew in building a school of theater that we wanted to include kids, adults, professionals and regular people,” said Levine. “Like the dentist who comes and sings with us — we want everybody in this school of theater.”
The result is a multigenerational school that whole families sometimes participate in.
Steve Breland, a consultant in software implementation, attends a class for adults called Acting for Non-Actors, while his son, Azizi, 9, takes classes with the Playhouse Players, which puts on musicals featuring children ages 7 to 12. Azizi has also taken a puppetry class and participated in the Junior Theater Festival.
“It just really opened him up,” said Breland of his son. “He absolutely loves it.”
It’s possible Azizi even sees acting as a career path. He’s a real little ham, Breland said.
“Remember, there’s only one professional actor in our family,” Azizi recently told his father while they ran lines together.
Father and son will have the opportunity to appear on the mainstage together Dec. 13 as part of the playhouse’s inaugural “Jingle + Mingle” event. Over the course of that day, adults and kids alike will perform portions of their work during an open-house and public holiday celebration featuring tours of the theater and fake snow in the courtyard.
“This is year one of really bringing it all together,” said Feldman.
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