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A Noise Within (ANW), the acclaimed classical repertory theatre company, broke ground on its highly anticipated 300-seat permanent home, hailed as an anchor in East Pasadena's arts expansion, on Tuesday, July 20, 2010. This major milestone for the company, led by Co-Founders/Co-Artistic Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, comes after years of comprehensive planning and unusually successful, ongoing fundraising efforts, with $10.1 million of the $13.3 million goal raised to date. The new state-of-the-art 33,000-square-foot facility, set for completion in Fall 2011, is intended to broaden artistic possibilities, offer a greater scope of educational opportunities, meet ticket demand and allow A Noise Within to expand its role as a leader in the presentation and preservation of classical theatre. The company is slated to move to Pasadena in time for its 20th season; its 2010-11 (19th) season will be staged in its long-time Glendale venue. Since inception, A Noise Within has attracted fiercely loyal audiences and consistently high praise from the media.
The new theatre, located at the corner of Foothill Blvd. and Sierra Madre Villa Ave. next to the Gold Line, is being built in the former Stuart Pharmaceutical building, a historic, mid-century modern masterpiece designed by celebrated architect Edward Durell Stone, known for landmark buildings around the country including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and Radio City Music Hall in New York. Constructed in the mid-1950s, the Stuart Pharmaceutical building was listed on the National Register in 1998. The morning groundbreaking was attended by some 250 friends, funders, and special guests from the theatre world, the Pasadena community, the County of Los Angeles and beyond. Fittingly, the celebration came complete with dramatic flourishes from A Noise Within's award-winning troupe of resident actors, who offered an entertaining glimpse into the company's past, present and future. Following the presentation, remarks were made by Elliott and Rodriguez-Elliott; Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, a long-time fan of A Noise Within who has been instrumental in the company's relocation to Pasadena; City Councilmember Steve Haderlein; ANW Board President Terry Kay; Dennis DePietro, representing the DePietro family which owns the company's current Glendale theatre that has been its home for the last 19 years; real estate developers David Worrell and Jeff Allen, SMV Technology Partners, who donated the Pasadena project's land to A Noise Within; and Wendy Garen, executive director, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, which also made a substantial gift to the capital campaign.
According to Bogaard, "The coming of A Noise Within to Pasadena marks a new era in the City's cultural life. With its distinguished artistic resources, including renowned theatres, Pasadena happily welcomes A Noise Within as one of the premiere theatre companies in the western United States. Playgoers and pupils will benefit enormously from A Noise Within's classical repertory program.""We are extraordinarily excited about breaking ground and sinking deep and lasting roots in the area," notes Rodriguez-Elliott. Adds Elliott, "It's been an extremely complicated process to clear the way for a project of this scope and magnitude, and we are grateful to everyone involved in getting us to this point."A Noise Within's new performance space contains a thrust stage, offering the same intimacy that audience members enjoy in ANW's current location and allowing increased audience capacity to 55,000 people annually. It also offers ample backstage and support facilities, offices, classrooms, storage, plentiful convenient parking, and a striking landscape garden designed by Thomas Church. Additionally, the project features an educational Classics Live! Learning Center for teachers and students with a library of audio-visual resources as well as a wealth of study guides and reference and curricular materials all designed to bring the classics to life. ANW's highly regarded education program will be able to double the number of students served each year.
Key gifts for the project have come from The Ahmanson Foundation; the Ajax Foundation; David Worrell and Jeff Allen, SMV Technology Partners, LLC (a gift of land); Elizabeth F. Redmond, ANW Board of Directors (widow of Charles Redmond); The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation; Terry and Jeanie Kay (Terry Kay is President of ANW's Board of Directors); The Rose Hills Foundation; the Weingart Foundation; and a member of ANW's board of directors who prefers to remain anonymous. Just under 1,000 donations have been made to the capital campaign.A Noise Within is the only year-round classical repertory company in Southern California and one of only a handful in the entire country dedicated solely to producing classical dramatic literature in the repertory tradition of rotating productions with a resident company of professional artists. It has been hailed by critics as "adventurous," "compelling and current," "ingenuity at work," "a bona fide class act," and "what great theatre is all about." The company has presented more than 120 plays from the classics of world literature, each season producing works from authors ranging from Shakespeare and Molière to Ibsen, O'Neill and Shaw to Miller and Williams. ANW's consistent dedication to quality has been rewarded with more than two dozen Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards as well as numerous LA Weekly and Backstage Garland awards. Past highlights include a collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl.
A Noise's Within's new home is located at 3360 East Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena, CA, 91107. For information on A Noise Within, call (818) 240-0910 x 1 or visit www.ANoiseWithin.org.
