Ensemble Theatre Company (ETC) shines the spotlight on the golden state next season, with the theme “California Here and Now” exploring stories about our state with a lineup they describe as “a season that celebrates, interrogates, and lovingly skewers the state we call home.”
First up is Jonathan Tolins’s Buyer & Cellar (Oct. 7-25), a one-man show about an out-of-work actor who lands the strangest gig of his life: working in the private shopping mall that Barbra Streisand built in the basement of her Malibu estate. What begins as a surreal job becomes an unexpected friendship as he navigates the absurd reality of playing shopkeeper to one of the world’s biggest stars.
The 30th anniversary of the groundbreaking musical Rent, with music, lyrics, and book by Jonathan Larson, is up next (Dec. 2-20). An ode to La Bohème, with a rock-driven score and the story of a group of young artists navigating love, friendship, and the challenges of life — the timeless message of love and loss and grabbing every minute of happiness you can out of life still resonates today.