Beginning around 1912, the period known as the
Little Theatre Movement developed in cities and towns across the United States. The artistic community that founded the Pasadena Playhouse was started in 1916 when actor-director
Gilmor Brown began producing a series of plays at a renovated
burlesque theatre with his troupe "The Gilmor Brown Players". Brown established the Community Playhouse Association of Pasadena in 1917 that would later become the Pasadena Playhouse Association, which necessitated a new venue for productions. The
community theatre organization quickly grew and in May 1924, the citizens of Pasadena raised funds to build a new theatre in the city center at 39 South El Molino Avenue. Completed in 1925, the theatre was designed in a
Spanish Colonial Revival style by Pasadena artist and architect
Elmer Grey, with a fire curtain painted by Pasadena artist
Alson S. Clark. Its non-professional, community beginnings and the tremendous amount of local support for the project led
George Bernard Shaw to dub Pasadena "the
Athens of the West", likening the enterprise to the ancient Festival
Dionysia. The building that was designed by Grey and built by the Winter Construction Co. drew the attention of the nation, bringing Southern California world premieres by authors such as
Eugene O'Neill,
William Saroyan,
Noël Coward,
F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Tennessee Williams, as well as many English language premieres of significant European dramas. The Playhouse was recognized by the Legislature as the State Theatre of
California in 1937. The Pasadena Playhouse School of
Theatre Arts was established in 1927 initially offering course credit via the
University of California. Later known as the
Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, it eventually became an accredited college in 1936, offering BFA and MFA degrees. The college trained notable talents such as
Raymond Burr,
Victor Mature,
Ernest Borgnine,
Eleanor Parker,
Charles Bronson,
Ray Vasquez,
Gene Hackman,
Dustin Hoffman,
Sally Struthers,
Jamie Farr,
Mako,
Robert Rockwell, and others. During the school years, the Playhouse was very active, having as many as five independent stages in operation at any given time, giving 306–322 performances annually on the main stage alone. The varied staging capabilities offered by its five venues led the Playhouse to become one of the first companies in California to experiment with new theatrical forms such as
theatre-in-the-round. The Playhouse also built and operated one of the first television stations in Southern California. In addition to training the Air Force to use television and radio equipment, the Pasadena Playhouse supplied the majority of Southern California's early TV stations with the first trained technicians in the business. After six years, the city bought the building in 1975 and later transferred it to real estate developer David Houk. After it lay dormant for 17 years, he relaunched the theatre in 1986 as a place to develop shows that would tour other California venues. While the Pasadena Playhouse reopened for use as a community theatre, the acting school remained closed. Over the next twenty years, the theatre staged classic drama, new musicals and plays, and integrated itself as an educational facility, slowly regaining a prominent place in the national theatre scene to become a major operation of over eight million dollars a year by 2008. ==2010-2011 financial situation==