San Diego Rep - About The Rep

Our programming encompasses five major components: (1) a five to seven play mainstage season; (2) the Calafia Initiative, a binational commissioning and producing initiative; (3) our annual cultural festivals, Kuumba Fest, which celebrates the artistry of our African-American community, and the Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival; (4) community partnerships; and (5) education programs.

1. MAINSTAGE SEASON

The REP mainstage season features world premieres, re-imagined classics of the world stage, and innovative work by contemporary playwrights. Productions slated for the season are always culturally and stylistically diverse. The REP has an extraordinary track record of producing work that speaks to the multicultural audiences of San Diego. New works by Latino and African American playwrights are prominent on our stages. Our work blends many art forms in the creation of theatrical performance. There have been many recent triumphs on the REP stages: our production of It Ain’t Nothin’ but the BlueS moved to Broadway and garnered four Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Musical; we staged the world premiere of Yehuda Hyman’s Mad Dancers, winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays; the smash hit musical Love, Janis was brought back for a second run due to popular demand; our revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee’s classic American play, was such a popular and critical success that the production moved to Los Angeles for a lauded run the world premiere of Luis Valdez’s first new play in 14 years, Mummified Deer, winner of an AT&T OnStage Production Award; Nuevo California proclaimed Outstanding New Play by San Diego’s 2003 Theatre Critics Circle; and the American roots musical Fire on the Mountain, based on actual interviews with coal miners taken from the National Archives.

2. THE CALAFIA INITIATIVE

In 1996, the REP launched a bilingual, binational commissioning and producing initiative to create new work that speaks to and about the people of the Californias – US and Mexico, past and present. Building on unique partnerships with artists, arts organizations, scholars, and community activists, the Calafia Initiative culminates in full-scale productions as part of the subscription season. Focusing on the creation of regionally voiced work, the Calafia Initiative fosters new cultural exploration and expression through community-based collaboration. The most recent project has been the 2005-2006 world premiere of Restless Spirits written by playwright Allan Havis.

3. CULTURAL FESTIVALS

The REP annually produces two multicultural, multidisciplinary festivals of the performing and visual arts. Kuumba Fest, a Black History Month celebration of African American arts and creativity, hosts 100 performers for a weekend of workshops and showcase performances. Now in its 14^th year, Kuumba Fest attracts more than 3500 people who come together in a celebration of life, learning about cultural heritage and history through: art; poetry; drumming; dance; music; a cultural marketplace; workshops; educational forums; plays; fitness, dance, talent, and speech competitions; all positive hip-hop showcases; and a traditional royal court honoring positive community role-models. The goal of the festival is to educate and empower communities across our city, especially underserved youth from the inner-city. "Kuumba" is a Swahili word for "creativity," and Kuumba Fest offers opportunities to find positive images, personal expression and community-building through creativity.

The Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival, now in its 15th year, is one of the most significant and established community arts Festivals on the West Coast. It was born out of an idea of using music, theatre, dance, and fine arts to express significant and inspirational ideas of Jewish philosophy, culture, history, and spirituality and presenting them in a public venue to bring people together from across all communities. The three-week Festival celebrates the great diversity within the Jewish community – with artists from more than 10 countries performing works in five different languages. The Festival has commissioned and produced more than 50 pieces of new theatre, music, and dance which have gone forth to be performed at venues across the world. The Festival serves to commission, nurture, and support accomplished and novice Jewish artists in the serious exploration of Jewish history and traditions and provides entertainment, community pride, and many levels of education for citizens of San Diego across all communities. The San Diego Jewish Press Heritage has called the Jewish Arts Festival, “an artistic feast for the eyes, ears, mind, and spirit.”

4. COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS

Creating and nurturing partnerships is a cornerstone of the REP’s work. The REP operates the Lyceum theatre and gallery complex as a “Cultural Town Hall” for San Diego. We manage the facilities on behalf of the City of San Diego, and through this role, we assure culturally balanced programming and access to the arts for local residents. Each season, more than 40 local arts groups take advantage of the REP’s resources for production and box office support, joint marketing ventures, and facilities. Organizations may produce their own work, relying on the REP for varying levels of support, or they may join with the REP to co-produce projects. As we seek out and welcome diverse groups to the Lyceum, we broaden the audience base for everyone who produces here. REP co-producing partners include: Teatro Mascara Magica, Asian Story Theatre, Eveoke Dance Theatre, San Diego Black Film Festival, Renaissance Theatre Company, Women’s Repertory Theatre, and San Diego Ballet.

The Lyceum complex also features an exciting gallery space that the REP manages. We welcome visual artists from all disciplines, styles, backgrounds, and cultures to exhibit their work in our gallery. Every month, we bring the artists from our locale to the people of our city, from quilters to schoolchildren, from the “Best of Tijuana Artists” to a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. Thematically, the sculptures, paintings, lithographs, and photography we display often reflect the tone and subject matter we are presenting on our stages.

5. EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

In recognition of educational excellence, the REP was honored to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts—one of 30 theatres nationally— to participate in the Shakespeare for a New Generation initiative in spring of 2005. On-going educational programs include: Project Discovery, a comprehensive, intercultural use of theatre to educate and enlighten students from traditionally underserved communities, providing drastically reduced price tickets and study guides; Plays Plus, which offers enhanced play-going opportunities for seniors and other audience members who want to delve deeper into the theatrical world; Sam’s Salon, a humanities based lecture series, led by Artistic Director, Sam Woodhouse on the first Wednesday evening performance after Opening Night for each of the productions; Building Plays Building Pride, which involves students, including underserved youth, and REP professionals in the creation of plays about cultural history, role models, and positive choices; Production Artisan Apprentices, which recruits college and professional level artisans, who have chosen the theatre for a career, to receive hands-on experience and training in scenery construction, costume design and construction, lighting design, sound design, stage management, and properties; and The Conservatory, a series of master classes in various acting and movement techniques taught by artists in residence and members of the REP’s artistic staff.

San Diego Repertory Theatre was born of a street theatre group called Indian Magique in 1976. The company was founded by Sam Woodhouse and Douglas Jacobs and had its first home in the Sixth Avenue Playhouse. Productions there included 19 San Diego premieres and 12 West Coast premieres of such plays as American Buffalo, The Unseen Hand, Curse of the Starving Class, Ladyhouse Blues, Getting Out, Wings, Working, Bleacher Bums, and K2. World premieres included Funeral March for a One-Man Band and Gold!, a project developed by the company (which included Whoopi Goldberg). Since 1976, the REP has staged A Christmas Carol, reinventing and restaging Dickens’s immortal holiday story every two to three years.

In 1986, the REP moved to the new Lyceum Theatres in Horton Plaza, marking the beginning of a unique partnership with the City of San Diego. The REP took on the role of Resident Manager of the Lyceum complex, providing year-round services to other arts and community organizations. In a single year, 350- 400 performances are presented in the theatres, with an annual attendance of over 150,000 people. Of these events, two-thirds are co-productions between the REP and more than 40 community organizations.

Highlights of the REP's first years of work in the Lyceum include Holy Ghosts, which was taken to New York as part of the prestigious American Theatre Exchange; the West Coast premiere of Peter Barnes' Red Noses, which won the San Diego Critics’ Circle Award for Best Production; and the long running musical comedy, Six Women with Brain Death, or Expiring Minds Want to Know.

In the past 30 seasons, the REP has produced 40 world premieres, including A Quiet Love by Rick Najera; A Diva Like Me by Ren Woods; Albanian Softshoe by Mac Wellman; Thin Air: Tales of a Revolution by Lynne Alvarez; The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson by Amiri Baraka with music by Max Roach; Ruby's Bucket of Blood by Julie Hebert with music by Mark Bingham; R. Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of the Universe by Douglas Jacobs; The Mad Dancers by Yehuda Hyman; Earthquake Sun, written and directed by Luis Valdez; Three Mo’ Divas written and directed by Marion J. Caffey; Nuevo California, written by Bernardo Solano and Allan Havis; and Oxygen by Carl Djerrasi and Roald Hoffman. Several plays have had their Spanish language world premieres as part of the REP's Teatro Sin Fronteras initiative, including El Ladron de Corazones by Octavio Solis and La Plaza Chica, written, translated, and directed by María Irene Fornés.

The past four seasons have seen: the triumphant return of It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, after its Tony Award-nominated Broadway run; the much-acclaimed rock musical Love, Janis, which was brought back to the REP stages due to popular demand; a contemporary jazz-infused staging of The Merchant of Venice, which ran in repertory with the one-person show Shylock, starring Ron Campbell; a remarkable production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which traveled to Los Angeles and has been nominated for numerous awards; and the residency of playwright Bernardo Solano, leading to the world premiere of his binational drama Nuevo California, written with Allan Havis; residency of director/writer Randall Myler and musician Dan Wheetman leading to the world premiere of their “coal mining” musical, Fire on the Mountain and two residencies for writer/director Luis Valdez which have lead to productions of his musicals Zoot Suit and Bandido!, and the world premieres of Mummified Deer in 2000, Earthquake Sun in 2004, and Corridos Remix: A Musical Fusion of Ballads Beyond Borders, in 2005.

In 1996, Artistic Director Sam Woodhouse founded the Calafia Initiative – a long-term commitment to provoking unlikely partnerships that lead to new works of performance that speak to the past and future of our binational region. The Calafia Initiative has hosted a series of renowned international artists-in-residence, including designers Alejandro Luna and Tolita Figueroa from Mexico City; conductor Eduardo Garcia Barrios from Lima, Peru; composer Joseph Julian Gonzalez; playwrights Rick Najera and Elaine Romero; and most prominently playwrights, Bernardo Solano and Luis Valdez, who both joined the REP artistic team in extended multi-year residencies. To date, Calafia has supported 18 new works including: the commissioning, developing and world premiere of Culture Clash in Bordertown, built by Culture Clash through interviews with 100 regional citizens, a tri-lingual Misa Azteca oratorio by Joseph Julian Gonzalez; the world premiere of Celebration of the Lizard, a new musical fable featuring the music of Jim Morrison and the Doors; three new plays about the diverse people of the San Diego neighborhood of City Heights called Around the World in a Single Day. Restless Spirits, regarding stories and legends of displacement written by Allan Havis, had its world premiere run January 28 through February 19, 2006.

The REP has established a reputation for creating innovative productions of the classics. Recent revivals include Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and KING LEAR, Goldoni’s Mirandolina, and Clare Booth Luce's The Women, directed by Anne Bogart.

Over the past decade, the REP has earned unprecedented critical acclaim by amassing more than 100 DramaLogue Awards and San Diego's Critics Circle Awards. Just this past January, San Diego Repertory Theatre received the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle 2005 Craig Noel Award “For 30 Years of Artistic Dedication to Downtown and Diversity”.

San Diego Repertory Theatre is the city's most prominent downtown theatre. The third-largest professional theatre in San Diego, we employ over 800 artists, craftspeople, collaborators, and consultants a year, as well as serving audiences of 150,000 people each season. Currently celebrating our 30th Anniversary Season, the REP operates on a budget of $3.3 million.

San Diego Repertory Theatre has achieved national renown for its adventurous programming and artistic excellence, making significant contributions in the areas of: commissioning and producing new works; enriching and re-interpreting the classics through the inclusion of multiple artistic disciplines; embracing cultural diversity both on stage and off; and developing regionally-voiced work as a theatrical form. As the “Cultural Town Hall” for San Diego, we produce distinguished professional theatre and grassroots performance, offering the people of San Diego the opportunity to come together and reflect on the place we call home.