Golden Bough Playhouse
Encyclopedia
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, often called simply Carmel, is a small city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated in 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, the town is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history...
on Monte Verde St., between 8th and 9th Avenues. The playhouse occupies the site of the former Carmel Arts and Crafts Clubhouse, Carmel's first cultural center and theatre, built in 1906-07 on Casanova Street, and the Arts & Crafts Hall, built in 1923-24 on an adjacent lot on Monte Verde Street. The early Carmel bohemians
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
participated in events held at these facilities, including writers Mary Austin and George Sterling
George Sterling
George Sterling was an American poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated in Northern California as one of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in the rest of the United States.-Biography:Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the...
. The dramatic presentations there achieved national attention as early as 1914, and an article in The Mercury Herald commented "...a fever of activity seems to have seized the community and each newcomer is immediately inoculated and begins with great enthusiasm to do something... with plays, studios and studies...".
Both the clubhouse and the Arts & Crafts Hall were destroyed by fire in 1949. The current building, which now houses 2 theatres, was built in 1952 by Edward Kuster, owner and operator of both the Golden Bough Playhouse, as well as its predecessor, the Theatre of the Golden Bough, which was located on Ocean Ave.
Since 1994, the facility has been owned and operated by Pacific Repertory Theatre
Pacific Repertory Theatre
The Pacific Repertory Theatre is a non-profit California corporation, based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, that produces theatrical productions and events, including the annual Carmel Shake-speare Festival, and is the only year-round professional Equity theatre in the Central California Coast...
, Monterey County's only year-round professional theatre company. A major renovation is planned for the aging facility, with a building project expected to start as early as summer of 2010.
History
In 1905, to foster the arts in the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea, CaliforniaCarmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, often called simply Carmel, is a small city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated in 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, the town is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history...
, the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club was formed. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the village received an influx of artists and other creative people escaping the disaster area. Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
describes the artists' colony in a portion of his novel, The Valley of the Moon
The Valley of the Moon
The Valley of the Moon is a novel by American writer Jack London...
. Among the noted writers and poets who thrived in Carmel and were associated with the club were Mary Austin, George Sterling
George Sterling
George Sterling was an American poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated in Northern California as one of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in the rest of the United States.-Biography:Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the...
, Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.-Life:Jeffers was born in...
and Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
.
In 1906-07, the club built the town's first cultural center and theatre, The Carmel Arts & Crafts Clubhouse. Poets Austin and Sterling performed their "private theatricals" there. By 1913, The Arts and Crafts Club had begun organizing lessons for aspiring painters, actors & craftsmen. Some of the most prominent painters in the United States, such as William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
, Xavier Martinez
Xavier Martinez
Xavier Timoteo Martínez was a California artist active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and, after becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States, died in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California...
, Mary DeNeale Morgan and C. Chapel Judson offered six weeks of instruction for $15.
The dramas enacted by the Arts & Crafts Club attracted considerable attention, with an article in The Clubwoman noting, "Probably no other women's club in the country has achieved a more remarkable success in the way of dramatic ventures than has The Carmel Club of Arts & Crafts".
Theatrical activities in the town grew to such a proportion that between 1922 and 1924, two competing indoor theatres were built - the Arts & Crafts Hall on Monte Verde Street (renamed numerous times including the Abalone Theatre, the Filmarte, and the Carmel Playhouse) and the first Theatre of the Golden Bough, located on Ocean Ave. This "Golden Bough" (one of two) was designed and built by Edward G. Kuster. Kuster was a musician and lawyer from Los Angeles who relocated to Carmel to establish his own theatre and school.
In 1928, the Abalone League, a local amateur baseball club and active thespian group, bought the Arts and Crafts Hall from the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club and renames it the Abalone Theatre, and later that year Kuster leased the Theatre of the Golden Bough (on Ocean Ave) to a local movie exhibitor, the Manzanita Theatre, and traveled to Europe for one year to study production techniques in Berlin and to negotiate for rights to produce English and european plays in the United States.
In 1929, after returning from is European trip, Kuster was approached by the Abalone League who, beset by financial trouble, offered to sell Kuster its entire theatre operation, including both Monte Verde and Casanova Street buildings - an offer that Kuster readily accepted. Kuster remodeled the facility and renamed it the Studio Theatre of the Golden Bough. He moved all his activities to the new theater - plays concerts, traveling theatre goups, lectures - and leased the theatre of the Golden Bough on Ocean Ave. for five years to movie chain that rename it the Carmel Theatre.
From 1932-34, Kuster produced plays in San Francisco and directed a season for the Fresno Players where his translation of By Candlelight is first presented. In 1935, Kuster renegotiated his lease with the movie tenants of the Theatre of the Golden Bough (on Ocean Ave.), to perform a stage play one weekend each month. On May 17, 1935, he opened his production of By Candlelight, but two nights later, on May 19, the original Theatre of the Golden Bough was destroyed by fire. Kuster, who had previously bought out the Arts and Crafts Theatre, moved his film operation to the older facility on Monte Verde Street, renamed it the Filmarte and becomes the first "art house" between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
In 1936, Kuster returned to San Francisco to a Sutter and Van Ness 200-seat theater, naming it the Golden Bough Playhouse. In 1938, Theatre labor union problems forced him to give up the project. Later that year he was invited to Hollywood for two years as the personal assistant to Max Reinhardt. While there, he taught classes and directed English and American plays in Reinhardt's Theatre Workshop. In 1940 Kuster returned to Carmel and the Filmarte, whose lease had expired, renamed it the Golden Bough Playhouse and again presented plays, foreign films and quality American films year-round. For two summers, 1940 and 1941, he directed the Golden Bough School of Theatre.
In 1949, after remounting By Candlelight, this second "Golden Bough" also burned to the ground. It was rebuilt as a two-theatre facility and reopened in 1952.
In 1994, the building was purchased by Pacific Repertory Theatre
Pacific Repertory Theatre
The Pacific Repertory Theatre is a non-profit California corporation, based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, that produces theatrical productions and events, including the annual Carmel Shake-speare Festival, and is the only year-round professional Equity theatre in the Central California Coast...
(PacRep), Monterey County's only year-round professional theatre company. The facility includes the 330-seat Golden Bough Theatre and 120-seat Circle Theatre, presenting over 175 performances in Carmel every year. In 2006, the Carmel Historic Resources Board gave approval for PacRep to make modifications to the building, including remodeling or demolition. In 2008, PacRep presented the Carmel Planning Commission with concept plans for a renovated facility. Fundraising is ongoing, and construction is expected to begin in the summer of 2010.