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Curtains Up for ‘50 Years of Opening Nights’ at Cal State Northridge

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Nov. 17, 2006) -- The spirits of Hedda Gabler, Edwin Booth, Lear and Lorca will glide among the celebrants who will gather in Cal State Northridge’s Campus Theatre on the evening of Dec. 14 to toast the university’s Theatre Department’s rich 50-year theatrical tradition.

"50 Years of Opening Nights" will bring alumni, faculty, staff and students together in recognition of more than 600 productions staged at Northridge since the debut of "Many Moons," directed by Teenage Drama Workshop founder William Schlosser, on Dec.14, 1956. At that time, what was to become CSUN still was a satellite of Cal State Los Angeles.

Co-hosted by the Theatre Department and the CSUN Alumni Association, the invitational event also will salute the department’s 50th anniversary production, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s "You Can’t Take It With You." Billed as "America’s Favorite Comedy," the Pulitzer Prize winner staging the antics of Grandpa Martin Vanderhof’s eccentric, chaotic household will be seen in the Campus Theatre in December.

"When we were putting together the 2006-07 season, we thought we should go with something very American, very uplifting, for the 50th anniversary production," said Peter Grego, Theatre Department chair and winner of the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award in Direction. "‘You Can’t Take It With You,’ first performed here in 1976, is a big production with everything in it from snakes to xylophones. It’s great for the season and the celebration."

Up to 20 cast members will get into the act, compared to the five or ten normally cast in college productions.

With costume professor Garry Lennon off working alongside creative supervisor and CSUN alum Michael Reno on the pre-Broadway comedy "Sister Act" at the Pasadena Playhouse, Grego invited two other distinguished alumni to CSUN. Multiple Emmy Award winners Bob Miller and Steve Howard are creating their costume magic for the campus’ fall 2006 productions, including the 1936 Kaufman/Hart comic tour de force.

Adding to the "Let’s put on a show!" spirit of the anniversary event, theatre manager William Taylor will take on the role of Grandpa Vanderhof in the play.

The Dec. 14 event will highlight memories of productions past, as well as the facilities which showcased them.

"For the first four years, theatre production at CSUN was staged in ‘Theater Intime,’ a temporary tin structure called the ‘P’ building, once a physical education warehouse," Grego said. "During summers, they used a big tent on Devonshire Downs."

In those days, drama students often rehearsed in a barn at the Downs, with horses listening to their lines.

Built in 1960, Nordhoff Hall--which houses the Little, Campus and Studio Theatres--once was a bomb shelter. "That’s why this building survived all the earthquakes so well," said Taylor. "They used to keep Civil Defense biscuits downstairs."

Famous names also are a part of CSUN theater’s past, among them the likes of actors Jon Voigt in "Hamlet," William Marshall and Teri Garr. But on Dec. 14, everyone will be on stage—literally. The "You Can’t Take It With You" stage will be struck in time to accommodate past and present theater faculty and staff, students, alumni and community theater lovers who will come to celebrate the university’s theatrical milestone.

For more information about the event, call (818) 677-3091 or 3086.