The Elephant Theatre Company is producing its last production at the infamous Lillian Theatre in Theatre Row Hollywood. The final show, The Great Divide (get tickets HERE), written by Lyle Kessler and directed by David Fofi, will mark the end of an era. After The Great Divide closes on August 29th, The Lillian Theater, which has been the training ground for many of the finest in the Los Angeles theater scene, will close its doors.
For the last sixteen years, The Lillian Theatre has been home to The Elephant Theatre Company, in addition to housing hundreds of other groups and companies, putting up multiple award winning World, West Coast, and Los Angeles Premieres, and gaining a reputation as one of the most sought after venues in Southern California, which Artistic Director David Fofi attributes to the “unique way we designed the space, and the character and history of the building, as much as [to] the hardworking people who have walked through its doors and made it their own.”
When Fofi and the Elephant Theatre Company founding members outgrew their 45-seat warehouse space at Angel City Brewery downtown, back in the mid-nineties, the group sought out other venues, eventually making their home in an old refrigerator warehouse on Lillian Way, at the heart of Hollywood’s Theatre Row, across the street from where Buster Keaton’s sound stage once stood. The 99-seat Lillian Theater opened in 1999, complete with a 600-square-foot arena thrust stage, 20-foot wood-beamed ceilings, and exposed brick walls. Within the next couple of years, the Elephant Theatre Company acquired the attached storefronts along Santa Monica Boulevard, opening four more spaces. The two 80-seat proscenium stages, Elephant Asylum and Elephant Space, 40-seat Asylum Lab, and 24-seat black box Elephant Studio joined The Lillian Theatre to become the five-space theater complex called Elephant Stages.
In recent years, The Elephant Theatre Company has shared Elephant Stages with Combined Artform after Steve Kahn purchased the complex in 2007. Elephant Asylum and Asylum Lab were rebranded as Theatre Asylum, which is helmed by his partner Matthew Quinn, who moved from San Francisco to manage the space and produce theater in Los Angeles. Elephant Stages is also home to multiple acting coaches such as Christopher Game and Mark McPherson, numerous stage managers, designers, performers, theater lovers, and even a church which meets at the space weekly. Louis Douglas Jacobs, who wrote the critically acclaimed play 7 Redneck Cheerleaders, reminisced on his time at The Lillian, remarking “it’s been my second home since 1999.” 7 Redneck Cheerleaders debuted in The Lillian Theatre and after several successful remounts, the show recently celebrated the ten year anniversary of its World Premiere at The Lillian with a revival in the same space, with many members of the original cast returning. Now the show will have to find a new home for future reincarnations.
Local Stage Manager and Lighting/Sound Designer Matthew Ritcher, who was also the Technical Director at Elephant Stages from 2007 to 2013, notes “I don’t recall the first time I saw the Lillian space, but I do remember thinking how much I wanted to design there,” which he has done for many years, including designing lights for the West Coast Premiere of Stitching, and designing sound for the West Coast Premiere of Little Flower of East Orange by Stephen Adler. Ritcher continues, “some of my fondest memories are working on Elephant Company shows. I think I’ve done more shows on the spaces there than anywhere else. They were an asset to Theatre Row… and cannot be replaced.”
A forerunner in the Los Angeles theater scene, Elephant Stages has remained one of the busiest and most-used buildings for the performing arts. In fact, Matthew Quinn has aided in Theatre Asylum becoming the Fringeiest Venue (more HERE), according to L.A. Stage Alliance, with 78 different national and international groups putting on 424 performances in the five Elephant Stages theaters throughout June for this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival. Elephant Stages Technical Director, Aaron Lyons, adds, “We have a third of the Hollywood Fringe Festival in our walls. Where will all those shows go?”
Since its opening, Elephant Stages has seen its share of big names, both before and after their stardom. Just this year, Golden Globe and Emmy winning Felicity Huffman starred in David Mamet’s The Anarchist in The Asylum Theatre and last year Tony-nominated Elizabeth Rodriguez (Motherf**ker with a Hat, Orange Is The New Black) and Oscar-nominated Chazz Palminteri (Bronx Tale) starred in the World Premiere of Unorganized Crime in The Elephant Space.
Other notable productions at Elephant Stages by The Elephant Theatre Company include the World Premieres of Lovesick (with Labyrinth Theatre Company), Asleep on a Bicycle (LA Times Critic’s Pick), Block Nine (LA Weekly Production of the Year), Idea Man (LA Weekly Pick), and 7 Redneck Cheerleaders (LA Times Critic’s Pick); the West Coast Premiere of The North Plan by Jason Wells (Huffington Post’s Top 10 Los Angeles Productions of the Year); the Los Angeles Premiere of In Arabia We’d All Be Kings (4 LA Drama Critic’s Circle Awards), not to mention numerous other notable productions put on by other groups who have had successful and award-winning runs by booking at Elephant Stages through The Elephant Theatre Company’s Elephant Stageworks.
When naming the Company back in 1995, the founders happened upon a quote by Jacques Levy:
“When Sam (Shepard) was first starting to write plays, he was writing little, almost chamber plays. Sam was working on something and we were sitting and talking about some scene he wanted to do, and he said, ‘I don’t think that could be done anyway on the stage. There’s no point to doing it.’ And I said, ‘Look, Sam if you want an Elephant to appear on the stage without walking on from the wings, you should just write it and see what happens from it, and then see if there’s a way to do it, or a way to make it.’”
Thus, The Elephant Theatre Company was born, and for the last sixteen years they have been making elephants appear on stage at The Lillian and in the other theaters at Elephant Stages. After the building where the Elephant Stages/Theatre Asylum Complex resides was once again put on the market for sale, Matthew Quinn has worked to find a performance, venue-friendly buyer, hoping at least a few of the spaces will be saved, telling us that “it has been a true pleasure becoming a part of the vibrant Los Angeles Theatre Community, the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and having the opportunity to work with David Fofi and the Elephant Theatre Company. My wish is to continue, specifically with the Hollywood Fringe Festival, at our current space or another.” Perhaps an elephant will appear on stage, in the form of a buyer, and save Elephant Stages, otherwise, it is only a matter of months before all who have called it home for the last sixteen years will have to say goodbye to what Matthew Ritcher calls “an institution” in Los Angeles theater.
Bren Coombs, who recently stage managed Pulp Shakespeare and several Hollywood Fringe shows in Theatre Asylum and is producing The Great Divide in The Lillian, says “This may be the last show The Elephant Theatre Company puts up at The Lillian Theatre, but theater is ethereal, and like the ghost of Buster Keaton, who still inhabits the building, the legacy and artistry that The Lillian Theatre has witnessed lives on, because an elephant never forgets.”
