Fun facts

The Arts and Crafts Theatre (later the Abalone Theatre, the Carmel Playhouse and the Filmarte) is built on the site of today's Golden Bough, next to the original Arts and Crafts Clubhouse.

Ted Kuster opens the Theatre of the Golden Bough on Ocean Avenue in downtown Carmel. Hailed as a beautiful and technically innovative playhouse, it is called "the greatest little playhouse in America."

On the third weekend in May, after a performance of the thriller By Candlelight, the Ocean Avenue Theatre of the Golden Bough burns to the ground. Kuster consolidates at the Monte Verde Street theatre, eventually renaming it the Golden Bough Playhouse; its School of the Theatre grows to national renown.

In an incredible twist of fate, on the third weekend of May, the relocated Golden Bough Playhouse burns down too, after a revival of By Candlelight! The official cause: "spontaneous combustion."

The present Golden Bough Playhouse opens on Monte Verde Street, including the newly designed Circle Theatre on the Casanova Street side, presenting both live performance and film.

Under financial pressure, the Golden Bough Theatre is leased, and eventually sold, to the Golden State Theater Company (later United Artists). Live theatre and classes continue downstairs in the Circle Theatre, including Marcia Hovick's Children's Experimental Theatre from 1960.

Fires, finances and good old-fashioned small-town politics close the Circle Theatre, which becomes a storage room.

Stephen Moorer creates GroveMont Theatre (later renamed Pacific Repertory Theatre), staging productions at Carmel's Cherry Hall and presenting Robinson Jeffers' Medea at the Forest Theater, featuring local acting legend Rosamond Goodrich Zanides.

PacRep revives the Carmel Shakespeare Festival at the Forest Theater and begins producing children's and family productions on the outdoor stage, bringing the aging theater a "cultural awakening."

PacRep campaigns to Save the Golden Bough, eventually raising $1.2 million to keep it from the wrecking ball. The inaugural season opens in March 1995 with Death of a Salesman on the main stage and La Bête in the Circle Theatre, both directed by Stephen Moorer.

Olympia Dukakis performs in PacRep's The Cherry Orchard.

Susannah York performs her solo show, The Loves of Shakespeare's Women, at the Golden Bough.

Hamilton star Daveed Diggs plays Troilus in PacRep's Troilus & Cressida and appears in The Comedy of Errors.