The San Jose Repertory Theatre (a.k.a. San Jose Rep) was the first resident professional
theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
company in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
. It was founded in 1980 by James P. Reber. In 2008, after the demise of the
American Musical Theatre of San Jose
The American Musical Theatre of San Jose (AMTSJ), previously known as the San Jose Civic Light Opera (SJCLO), was a major professional nonprofit musical theatre company in San Jose, California. Founded in 1934 as the San Jose Light Opera Associatio ...
, the San Jose Rep became the largest non-profit, professional theatre company in the
South Bay with an annual operating budget of $5 million. In 2006, it was saved from impending insolvency by a $2 million bailout loan from the city of San Jose; this was later restructured into a long-term loan similar to a mortgage.
On June 11, 2014, San Jose Rep ceased operations and filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The building was reopened in 2015 as the
Hammer Theatre, now operated by
San Jose State University
San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sys ...
.
History
The early years
San Jose Rep was founded by James P. Reber in 1980 (originally as San Jose Repertory Company). James Reber was born in
Butte, Montana
Butte ( ) is a consolidated city-county and the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. The city covers , and, according to the ...
, and was raised in the
Santa Clara Valley
The Santa Clara Valley is a geologic trough in Northern California that extends 90 miles (145 km) south–southeast from San Francisco to Hollister. The longitudinal valley is bordered on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains and on the east ...
. He returned home after having been the first employee of the
Berkeley Shakespeare Festival
California Shakespeare Theater ("Cal Shakes") is a regional theater located in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Its performance space, the Lt. G. H. Bruns III Memorial Amphitheater, is located in Orinda, while the administrative offices, ...
(now California Shakespeare Theatre in Orinda, California) as business manager and general manager.
San Jose Rep was formed as San Jose's first resident professional theatre (originally called San Jose Repertory Company), the Rep soon became the fastest growing regional theatre in the country. Mr. Reber led a group of young artists, technical staff, and administrative staff, most of them based in the Bay Area. The Rep's opening production of
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
's ''
Private Lives
''Private Lives'' is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It concerns a divorced couple who, while honeymooning with their new spouses, discover that they are staying in adjacent rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetuall ...
'' was the first step for the fledgling company. This was followed by three more plays in 1981 (including one directed by Tony Taccone before he was artistic director at Berkeley Rep).
Early support came from the City of San Jose's Fine Arts Commission, which provided funding and worked to help create a viable board of trustees. The first board was led by Dr. Clayton Feldman, who was able to provide guidance for the young staff and helped recruit the future leadership of the Rep, including Attorney Phil Hammer, who succeeded Dr. Feldman. The
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commonly known as the Hewlett Foundation, is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Redington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1966. The Hewlett Foundation aw ...
provided a key early grant to help hire professional staff. Elaine Knoernschild joined the board in 1982 and became the third board president. As happens with most nonprofit theatres, the founding board members made success possible by their dedication and hard work.
Most notable among the Rep's early accomplishments was their payment of competitive wages, a commitment that Mr. Reber made for the company from its inception. David Lemos, a recent graduate of Santa Clara University, became the first production manager and eventually artistic director. Lemos and Reber negotiated with Actors Equity for early concessions and eventually to full Equity (Actors' Union) status. Artistically, San Jose Rep was a bit uneven, but given its age, many productions were surprisingly high quality and were given excellent critical notices and are still revered by patrons.
Among the more distinguished productions of the early Rep era were:
* A popular WWII version of Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew'' directed by Anne McNaughton and featuring a dashing and handsome young John Callahan, who later went on to a successful television career, as Petruchio.
* A series of large productions done in collaboration with the San Jose Symphony, sponsored by Merrill Lynch and known as the Merrill Lynch Great Performances. These were produced in the massive San Jose Center for Performing Arts and had very short runs. The first was ''The Tempest'' with music by Sibelius and the next was the only known production of Peter Shaffer's masterpiece, ''Amadeus,'' featuring Ray Birk as Salieri and a chorus of Opera San Jose singers performing Mozart's ''Requiem''. The music for both productions was conducted by George Cleave.
* A collaborative production of Emily Mann's ''Execution of Justice,'' which told the story of the infamous slaying of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone by Supervisor Dan White. The production was produced by San Jose Rep, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and the Eureka Theatre. It premiered at the
Montgomery Theater and later moved to Berkeley Repertory Theater.
*The American premiere of Ken Jenkin's original play, "007 Crossfire" directed by Edward Hastings.
*"Translations" by Irish playwright, Brian Friel, directed by James Edmondson in 1986.
*A collaboration with San Jose/Cleveland Ballet company for the production of "Swan Lake" with Cynthia Gregory as prima ballerina and San Jose Rep company performing member, Joanna Munisteri in 1987.
Among the distinguished alumni of San Jose Rep's early years, all of whom were recruited by the young Artistic Director David Lemos and played significant roles in launching the young company, are: James Houghton, founding artistic director of New York City's unique Signature Theater Company; Richard Rodgers, director of the Drama Division at Juilliard; James Bundy, artistic director of Yale Repertory Theater and dean of the prestigious Yale School of Drama; Elaine Avila, associate professor of theatre dramatic writing at the University of New Mexico; fingerstyle guitarist, singer, songwriter. Educator Stevie Coyle; Oregon Shakespeare Festival Associate Artist, director and resident actor -James Edmondson; Oregon State Representative Peter Buckley (D-Ashland); and Kenneth Kelleher, artistic director of Pacific Repertory Theater.
The Timothy Near era
The arrival of Timothy Near as artistic director in 1987 signaled the theatre's commitment to produce plays that spoke to the city's diverse community both directly or by inflection. The Rep achieved this with modernized versions of the classics, contemporary works, and a commitment to developing new plays.
[The History of San Jose Rep](_blank)
, San Jose Repertory Theatre.
In 1997 the company moved from the Montgomery Theater (attached to the
San Jose Civic Auditorium
The San Jose Civic (formerly known as the San Jose Civic Auditorium and City National Civic) is a former arena, currently operating as a theatre, located in downtown San Jose, California. The venue is owned by the City of San Jose, is managed by ...
[Montgomery Theater page](_blank)
/ref>[Montgomery Theater alternate page](_blank)
/ref>) into a new building in downtown San Jose, built specifically for the Rep. No longer restricted by space or required to share their venue with other organizations, the Rep was able to offer a wider range of programming, produced to high artistic and technical standards. Since moving to the new building, the Rep has commissioned several new works and has produced World premieres, U.S. premieres, and West Coast premieres.
Artistic Director
An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre or dance company, who handles the organization's artistic direction. They are generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the ...
Timothy Near's vision of reaching the ethnically diverse San Jose population was highlighted by opening the newly built new home of the Rep with the West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to:
Geography Australia
* Western Australia
*Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia
* West Coast, Tasmania
**West Coast Range, mountain range in the region
Canada
* Britis ...
premiere of '' Thunder Knocking on the Door'' by African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
playwright Keith Glover
Keith Glover FRS, FREng, FIEEE is a British electrical engineer. He is an emeritus professor of control engineering at the University of Cambridge. He is notable for his contributions to robust controller design and model order reduction.
...
, with a Rep-commissioned score by Michael Butler and local blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
legend Chris Cain
Chris Cain (born November 19, 1955) is an American blues musician.
He began playing professionally as a teenager in local clubs, at festivals, and at private events. He attended Pomona College.
Cain received four Blues Music Award nomination ...
.
The company commissioned a locally based musical from Craig Bohmler
Craig Bohmler (born April 7, 1956)Hansen, Niels-Henning."En tilgang til den klassiske Musik" NielsHenning.dk. p. 145. Retrieved August 12, 2019. is an American composer who specializes in opera and musical theater. His musicals include ''Gunmetal B ...
and Mary Bracken Phillips for its 25th anniversary season.[Messina, Marianne]
"Of Ghosts And Guns"
''Metro Silicon Valley
''Metro'' is a free weekly newspaper published by the San Jose, California, based Metro Newspapers. Also known as ''Metro Silicon Valley'', as well as ''Metroactive'' online, the paper serves the greater Silicon Valley area. In addition to print ...
''. September 7–13, 2005. This resulted in ''The Haunting of Winchester'', about rifle heiress Sarah Winchester
Sarah Lockwood Winchester (née Pardee; 1839 – September 5, 1922) was an American heiress who amassed great wealth after the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, and her mother in law, Jane Ellen Hope. Her inheritance included $20 m ...
and her Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion in San Jose, California, that was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. The house became a tourist attraction nine months after Winc ...
in San Jose. The musical premiered in September–October 2005.[Jenkins, Jeffrey Eric]
''The Best Plays Theater Yearbook''
Hal Leonard Corporation
Hal Leonard LLC (formerly Hal Leonard Corporation) is an American music publishing and distribution company founded in Winona, Minnesota, by Harold "Hal" Edstrom, his brother, Everett "Leonard" Edstrom, and fellow musician Roger Busdicker. Curre ...
, 2007. p. 337.
The Rick Lombardo era
After Near's departure, the Rep conducted a national search and selected Rick Lombardo in 2009. Lombardo joined the financially struggling company[KTVU, "SJ Council Approves $2 Million Bailout For Theater Company", 17 October 2006] after 13 years as the producing artistic director at New Repertory Theatre
The New Repertory Theatre (New Rep) is a Boston-area regional theater A regional theater or resident theater in the United States is a professional or semi-professional theater company that produces its own seasons. The term ''regional theater'' ...
in Boston, where he was credited with bringing in a younger and more diverse audience.[Louise Kennedy, The Boston Glob]
"The House Lombardo Built - and Left Behind"
Notable projects under Rick Lombardo's leadership include:
* The world premiere of Matthew Spangler
Matthew Spangler is an American playwright, director, and professor of performance studies.
Body of work
Matthew Spangler's plays have been produced on Broadway, in London's West End at Wyndham's Theatre and the Playhouse Theatre, off Broadway a ...
's stage adaptation of The Kite Runner (play), which was named Outstanding Production at a Large Theatre by the Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle,[Stark Insider]
"San Jose Rep receives 5 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle Awards", 04 May 2010 and which has also gone on to numerous other American and international productions.
* The American West Coast premiere of Anupama Chandrasekhar
Anupama Chandrasekhar is an Indian playwright born and based in Chennai. She is best known for her play ''The Father and the Assassin'', which earned her a nomination for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Play and was a finalist for ...
's play "Disconnect."
* The world premiere of a new rock musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.
Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...
's The Snow Queen
"The Snow Queen" ( da, Snedronningen) is an original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published 21 December 1844 in '' New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection'' (''Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samli ...
[San Jose Mercury News]
"Review: 'Snow Queen' sparkles at San Jose Rep", 05 December 2013 by Lombardo, Kirsten Brandt and Haddon Kime. After the San Jose Rep production in 2013, this musical was invited to be a featured selection in The New York Musical Theatre Festival
The New York Musical Festival (NYMF) was an annual three-week summer festival that operated from 2004 to 2019. It presented more than 30 new musicals a year in New York City's midtown theater district. More than half were chosen by leading theate ...
in 2014.[Theatremania]
"The Snow Queen Set for New York Premiere at NYMF
", 17 June 2014
* The American West Coast premiere of Melinda Lopez's play "Sonia Flew."
* The world premiere of Jonathan Marc Feldman's "Death of the Novel", which starred Vincent Kartheiser
Vincent Paul Kartheiser (born May 5, 1979) is an American actor. He played Pete Campbell on the AMC television series ''Mad Men'', for which he received six Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a ...
, from AMC's Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its fict ...
.[Playbill, "Death of the Novel, With "Mad Men" Star Vincent Kartheiser, Begins at San Jose Rep", 30 August 2012]
In June 2014, the San Jose Repertory Theatre board of trustees informed Mr. Lombardo that they had voted to close the theater as he was in rehearsal for American Premiere of "Landscape With Weapon" by Joe Penhall
Joe Scott Penhall (born 1967) is an English-Australian playwright and screenwriter, best known for his award-winning stage play ''Blue/Orange'', the award-winning West End musical ''Sunny Afternoon'' and creating the Netflix original series '' ...
. About the closing, Lombardo had this to say:
Facilities
The Rep started performing at the 500+ seat Montgomery Theatre, owned by the City of San Jose. The dream of building and performing in their own theater became reality in 1997 when they moved to their new home, San Jose Repertory Theater, a few blocks away. After the Rep closed, the building became the Susan and Phil Hammer Theatre Center named for the former mayor and her husband who were instrumental in getting the theater built. The theater consists of three seating sections, with a total capacity of 584 people.
See also
*American Conservatory Theater
The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school.
History
The Ameri ...
, San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
*Marin Theatre Company The Marin Theatre Company (MTC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and professional LORT D regional theater located in Mill Valley, California. Jasson Minadakis is the company's Artistic Director and Meredith Suttles its Managing Director / CEO.
...
, Mill Valley, California
Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 ...
* TheatreWorks (Silicon Valley), Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...
*Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Berkeley Repertory Theatre is a regional theater company located in Berkeley, California. It runs seven productions each season from its two stages in Downtown Berkeley.
History
The company was founded in 1968, as the East Bay's first resident pr ...
* Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...
*Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States, founded in 1935 by Angus L. Bowmer. The Festival now offers matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and contemporary pla ...
, Ashland, Oregon
Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States. It lies along Interstate 5 approximately 16 miles (26 km) north of the California border and near the south end of the Rogue Valley. The city's population was 21,360 at the 2020 cen ...
References
External links
Theatre consultant Theatre Projects Website
{{authority control
Culture of San Jose, California
Theatres in San Jose, California
League of Resident Theatres
Theatre companies in San Jose, California
Tourist attractions in San Jose, California
Performing groups established in 1980
Companies that have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy