South Coast Repertory (SCR), a professional theatre company, is located in Costa Mesa.
The Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory was founded by David Emmes, Martin Benson, and is now led by Paula Tomei, Artistic Director, and Managing Director. SCR is widely considered to be America’s most prominent producer of new plays. SCR’s three-stage David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center produces a variety of theatre. These include classics as well as modern masterpieces and contemporary hits. The theatre also produces Theatre for Young Audiences and Families plays and offers education and outreach programs all year. The Pacific Playwrights Festival is an annual, three-day festival of new plays.
SCR’s extensive program for new plays includes residencies and readings, workshops, and commissions. Each season, up to five world premieres are made. SCR has introduced the following plays: Collected Stories, Brooklyn Boy and Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies. An Entertainment: Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain and Everett Beekin’s Hurrah At Last and The Violet Hour. Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Aparel, Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss and Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon, Freedomland, and Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit are some of the plays. These plays were developed by SCR through the Pacific Playwrights Festival. This annual workshop and reading show for up to 8 new plays is attended by literary staff and artistic directors from all over the country.
SCR has produced forty percent of the world, American and West Coast premieres. SCR was awarded the Regional Theatre Tony Award in 1988 for Outstanding Achievement, especially in the field of new play development.
Martin Benson and David Emmes attended San Francisco State University. Emmes and Benson graduated from San Francisco State University. They gathered some San Francisco friends in summer 1963 in order to stage Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde at Long Beach’s Off-Broadway Theatre.
Emmes and Benson became convinced that there was a career in theatre after this experience and they drafted a plan for creating a theatre company. First, they would tour to rented stages. SCR’s first production, Moliere’s Tartuffe in November 1964, was opened at Newport Beach Ebell Club. SCR’s 50th season was celebrated in 2013-14 with a production called “Tartuffe.”
Next was their location. They decided to locate it in Orange County, California. This is virgin territory for major arts institutions.
A two-story Balboa Peninsula marine hardware store was rented to be converted into a 75-seat proscenium theatre for their Second Step. It was opened with Waiting for Godot on March 12, 1965.
Emmes and Benson were confident in their ability to carry on, and sought to convince their adoptive community about SCR’s future significance. In the Second Step lobby, they displayed an “Artistic Manifesto”, which featured a four-step growth model: the first season’s touring, the 75-seat stage at the current location, and two further transformations that led to a regional centre for theatre arts education.
The goal to run a nationally recognized arts institution motivated them from the Second Step lobby. However, the young company was focused on the business of survival. Everyone involved worked long hours and nights without any pay for years. They created and built the scenery, sold tickets and ushered. And of course, they acted. Don Took, Martha McFarland, and Art Koustik were among the first members of the acting company. They were joined by Richard Doyle and Hal Landon Jr., and Ron Boussom over the following seasons. They were the theatre’s Founding Artisans.