A Noise Within's Redmond Stage interior

The classical theater company A Noise Within (ANW) inaugurates its new digs Saturday in east Pasadena. A lot more than the address has changed.

The company’s previous home was a tall, narrow, somewhat forbidding 1928 building, formerly used as a Masonic temple. It had been designed by Arthur Lindley and Charles Selkirk, who previously had contributed to the design of the Alex Theatre, a few blocks north on Brand Boulevard in Glendale. The theater inside was notoriously cramped.

A Noise Within is now ensconced in the west end of the former Stuart Pharmaceutical building, a lower, more open structure designed by Edward Durell Stone. Its 1958 façade remains as a homage to mid-century architecture. Decorative indentations shaped like pills — a homage to mid-century pharmaceuticals — can still be spotted in a wall near the entrance. The theater itself is roomier than the one in Glendale, even with twice as many seats.

The opening attraction in that theater is a Twelfth Night set in Cuba — which was the birthplace of its director, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott.

Apollo Dukakis and Jeremy Rabb in "Twelfth Night"

Artistic directors Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott were initially stunned when they began working in their new space. “At our first rehearsal, for the first 15 minutes, Julia and I were just sitting here,” remembers Elliott. “And the actors were standing around the stage and we didn’t know what to say to them. We were so overwhelmed that we didn’t know what to do next. Eventually, because we’ve been doing this for so long, we began to work, doing what we’ve always done.”

“But it was surreal,” adds Rodriguez-Elliott.

It has been an arduous road. “It comes in waves,” recalls Elliott. “When we finally got through the bruising experience of working out a situation that worked for both the private owners [of the building, developers David Worrell and Jeff Allen] and the city of Pasadena, we said ‘Oh my god, it’s going to work.’ And then we had to go through the phase of continuing to raise money, and during that phase it was ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it’. So there were times during each of those episodes when it seemed we were so up against the wall. And then something would break and some sunlight would come through, and we’d be able to pass through it.”

A Noise without a theater

A little more than two decades ago, the couple was looking for rehearsal space for their first production in the LA area, Tennessee Williams’ Period of Adjustment, when they were introduced to Dennis and Robert De Pietro, the brothers who owned Glendale’s Masonic Temple building. A handshake deal let them in the door for rehearsals, but they performed the play at the Glendale Boy Scouts Hall. This occurred before the company was called A Noise Within.

That moniker was first used for the subsequent production of Hamlet (appropriately enough, as “a noise within” is a Shakespearean stage direction). The De Pietros suggested that the company should perform as well as rehearse in their building. Hamlet opened there in November 1991, paid for with $3000 out of pocket and directed by Art Manke, who became a co-artistic director of the company.

A Noise Within oo-founders/co-artistic directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott; Photo by Daniel Reichart

Prior to a show last year, Elliott acknowledged the De Pietro family in the audience. “If it were not for these wonderful friends, partners, and patrons,” he said, “we literally would not be here today. We owe our history to them.”

At first, A Noise Within performed on Actors’ Equity’s 99-seat Plan, but in 1996 the company  expanded the seating to 144, and ANW began using an Equity Code Agreement. The company took an ill-fated detour with a season at Cal State LA’s Luckman Theatre in 1999 but returned to Glendale a year later.  Manke left in 2001.

Fund-raising for a new theater started in earnest in 2007. When the Elliotts reached the half-way point of their then-$16 million capital campaign, they announced it to the world, subsequently reducing the goal to $13.5 million.

Elliott credits the campaign’s successful launch to “the Ahmanson Foundation, the Parsons Foundation and the Weingart Foundation. They all came in very early because we had a relationship with them. They believed in what we were doing. They had watched us for a long time. They knew they could bank on us and they knew we were going to do what we said we were going to do. If we weren’t dead by now…”

He adds, “If they hadn’t come in early, I don’t think we’d be standing here talking.” The Ahmanson Foundation is the single largest donor, providing a total of $2.5 million.

Rodriguez-Elliott adds, “I remember talking years and years ago with [ANW supporters] Mimi and [TV writer] Bernie West and telling them that we’ll have this brand new theater up in three years! They said, no, these things take time.”

“We didn’t listen,” Elliott admits. “There were so many times when I said to Julia, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t think we’re going to make it. I don’t know that I’ve got any more in me. Do you?’”

Exterior façade

She nods. “We have had, since season two, a development focus, even though it was rather skeletal early on. We developed those relationships over all those years and we got here during very difficult times on the strength of those relationships.”

We stand in the theater’s shop, a spacious area directly behind the stage, with a metal roll-up door that allows for deliveries of lumber and other bulky items. For 18 seasons in Glendale, construction crews built sets, made sure they fit together, took them apart and carried them individually up several flights of stairs – narrow stairs. Up, down, and back up again with the next flat.

“It’s always been a question for us — where are we going to be?” says Rodriguez-Elliot. “The Masonic Lodge was a wonderful building for us but we’ve always known it wasn’t ours and wouldn’t work as a permanent solution. Our board and other supporters have been so committed to this vision.”

Raising money during a recession

That A Noise Within, with a million dollar annual budget and staff of seven, could pull off such a large capital campaign during a recession raises the question: How did they do it?

“I can honestly say,” notes Rodriguez-Elliott, “that it speaks to, without sounding pompous, the strength of the mission and the quality of our work and the relationship our patrons have to the theater. Everything from major gifts from board members to people who’ve called to say they’re not going on vacation this year so they can send A Noise Within money. It’s been everybody pulling together.”

One of ANW’s largest gifts is $1.5 million from Elizabeth and Charles Redmond. The theater space itself, within the larger ANW complex, has been named Redmond Stage. “Chuck was our board president for many years before he passed away 10 years ago [this month],” notes Rodriguez-Elliott. “He was the Vice President of Times Mirror and so passionate about a home for this company. He’s been helping us from wherever he is.”

Elizabeth Redmond remains a board member, as is Lourdes Baird whom the Elliotts recruited in 2007. “I’ve been a government employee all my life, so I don’t think they expected me to be a big money provider,” says Baird, a former federal judge. “But I’ve known them forever, it seems, because my granddaughter Caitlin [now 22 and at the University of Oregon] got involved in high school and just blossomed, so there’s a soft spot in my heart for the company.”

Baird suspects the Elliotts wanted someone with legal background on the board. “I also have some connections with foundations where I know other board members, and I believe one or two did come through.”

While Baird has subscribed intermittently to other theaters around town, including the Pasadena Playhouse, she remains loyal to A Noise Within. “In 2007 everyone was a millionaire,” she jokes, “so the campaign began before the recession hit. Pasadena mayor Bill Bogaard was very involved. And over the years, I think it’s just remarkable that Geoff and Julia have kept this theater in the black.”

A Noise Within donors Kathy and Jim Drummy; Photo by Alex Berliner

Kathy Drummy and her husband Jim — both of them lawyers — are two of many reasons behind that fiscal success. Throughout the campaign, Drummy says, “We wrote checks. My husband and I have been long-term subscribers and we love ’em. We want to see A Noise Within be more than a single generation organization and, if you have a home, that may be more likely to occur.”

Drummy demurs when asked how many checks she and her husband have written. “Multiple,” she admits, “more than $25,000 [the publicly advertised tier]. We’ve been fortunate to run okay through these economic times, so we try to highlight a few organizations that we support, and this is one of the top ones.”

She gives the Elliotts a lot of credit. “I thought Geoff and Julia and the board put a lot of thought into the capital project and involved folks early on who had the energy and contacts to at least get the project in front of people who were more likely to give.” While not a board member at A Noise Within, Drummy does serve on the boards of the LA Master Chorale and Ojai Music Festival.

The credit Drummy gives the Elliotts would be misplaced had the Elliotts pursued their initial dreams. Elliott confesses, “Oh we just knew we would have a 500-seat theater in four years and a 300-seat theater attached to it and a restaurant – this hub or center of classical theater. In four years. Four years tops! But frankly, if that had happened, we wouldn’t be here. We would have imploded. I absolutely assure you we would’ve screwed it up.”

The new space — across the street from a retail center that includes Nordstrom Rack, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy and El Torito — also called for a subterranean level. It would have allowed for rehearsal space, costuming and under-stage entrances for actors. “But we cut that because of cost measures,” notes Elliott. “They were very expensive but also would have created an over balance in the space, which is very intimate. It wraps around the actor and the audience. I hung on to it for a while. I didn’t want to lose them. But now that we’re here, I’m so relieved to know that it was the right choice.”

The rehearsal space now sits on the top floor, next to the administrative offices, with floor to ceiling windows that take in an expansive view of the San Gabriel Mountains.  Elliott seems to take chivalrous pride in leaving the more scenic corner office to his wife.

On the main level, costumers now have a spacious shop next to the women’s dressing room, which is adjacent to the men’s. The hallway that connects them is wide, allowing space for full costume racks. They are near the stage left entrance. Both dressing rooms have showers, to Elliott’s great relief. He recalls an incident from the shower-less Glendale venue, when Robertson Dean played Oedipus:

“He came out toward the end of the play covered in this gooey, bloody mess, as if he had just emerged from the birth canal. He then had to rush to the basement, stand in a kiddy pool as an intern poured warm water over him to clean up a bit, then dash back upstairs for the curtain call. Never again!”

Within Redmond Stage

Exterior of box office and entrance. Note pill-shaped indentations on the arch around the entrance.

The primary patron entrance to the theater itself is in the rear, house-right. As you enter, the deep blue angled walls appear to change color depending on where you stand. The floor is concrete, and Elliott says it’ll remain so, giving the space a very ‘alive’ sound, perhaps too much.

“We haven’t had a full house yet to test that,” he noted, while showing off the facilities on Sept. 30. “The stage itself needs some work. The way it was constructed makes it a bit of an echo chamber. And we are addressing an electrical hum above [house left] where the lighting ballasts are located.”

In the Glendale space, Rodriguez-Elliott says, it was a challenge to hear actors when their backs were turned. “We’re finding now, however, that the sound is very balanced. There will be no curtain – just all scenery. We might do a grand drape that’s production-specific, but not in general. This building will be a work in progress for several years.”

A period of adjustment, as it were.

She points to the fly system over the stage. “We have 10 line sets – six that are movable and four that are set. For us, the ideal would be around 25. But it’s like buying a house – just getting here has been such an ordeal.”

Rodriguez-Elliott says the priority always has been retaining the intimacy between the actor and the audience. No seat is farther than seven rows from the stage. There is room to spare.

“What I love about it,” she notes, “is you get the scale of a proscenium theater with the intimacy of a smaller house. And it’s a depth we’ve never had before. In our previous space you’d try to create something that takes place ‘in the distance’ but you’d literally hit the back wall. You’d envision something in your mind but the reality is you’d have people on top of each other.”

Tech rehearsals for shows such as Great Expectations were a nightmare, she remembers, because “you’d have people standing against the wall. We did a production of [Georges Feydeau’s] A Flea in Her Ear where we had a bed that had to turn around and there was no room back there, so the only way to do it was to manually turn it by two interns dressed in black. Once they turned it they would run and flatten themselves up against the wall so the audience wouldn’t see them. It was hysterical.”

Now, however, grander, more epic productions are possible. “We never would have considered doing Antony and Cleopatra in our other space,” says Elliott, but it’s scheduled to open next March in Pasadena.

The debate over seating capacity was long and challenging, Elliott recalls.  “We initially were looking at 475-500 and then it was 400 and then 375. We eventually found what we thought was a sweet spot for us, having to do less with the business aspect and more with the aesthetic of what we do. We wanted the audience to be close enough to do the great classics up close and personal and 300 seats felt right to be able to do that.”

Theater interior with architectural detail

Rodriguez-Elliott emphasizes, “So this is actually 283.” Given ample space behind the back row, more seats could be added over time. “We could easily go up to 350. We also have two balcony areas where we could add seats if we wanted to.” More seats would, of course, raise Equity pay rates; ANW is using a Letter of Agreement referencing Equity’s LORT contract in the new space — a step up from its previous Code Agreement. Rodriguez-Elliott adds, “It might make sense for us to do that over time. We’ll see.”

Some of the equipment from Glendale, including lights, made the move, but they’ve been augmented. “We brought a lot of our instruments but added a whole new dimmer system. We have a new light board, new sound board,” Rodriguez-Elliott says, but “we brought a lot of our props and furniture and costumes” even after holding a rummage sale last month.

Lourdes Baird learned about the sale from a friend who saw it mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It said Geoff and Julia were selling fairy costumes and masks from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which my granddaughter Caitlin was in. I immediately called Julia and told her she had to save a mask for me. Julia said ‘We’re not selling any masks! Someone made that up!’ But she was able to salvage a wonderful headdress for me, this beautiful piece. I got it, put it on, and walked into a room where Caitlin was sitting – she screamed.”

A Noise Within is a few hundred thousand dollars shy of closing the books on its $13.5 million capital campaign. The final dollars, the Elliotts agree, are the hardest to raise. They have created a technical registry to tie giving to specific wish-list items, hoping donors will shower them with their beneficence.

One of their fund-raising techniques has been to urge patrons, in pre-performance speeches, to contribute the price of a cup of coffee, each day. “A buck and a half a day over five years means a lot,” says Rodriguez-Elliott.

“And those curtain speeches that you all know and love? They’re coming back!”

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Or What You Will runs through Dec. 16. Eugene O’Neil’s Desire Under the Elms opens Nov. 12 and runs in rep through Dec. 18. Michael Frayn’s Noises Off opens Jan. 6, 2012.  Plays Wed.-Sat. 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm. Tickets: $42-46. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. Free parking through an agreement with Metro at its Sierra Madre Villa Gold Line station a couple hundred yards away.  626-356-3100.  www.anoisewithin.org.

***All photos of A Noise Within Theatre by Michael Gutstadt