A Theater That Serves Its Community

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights in downtown Los Angeles, there is a free live concert in the lobby of the Los Angeles Theatre Center before the play begins. During this year’s World Cup, that same lobby was filled with neighborhood crowds cheering for the matches on a theater screen, while local vendors sold food and jewelry around them.

This bustling lobby and The Los Angeles Theatre Center are part of a five-theater complex in a 1912 former bank downtown. Run by the Latino Theater Company, it is designed to be a hive of cultural community-building. Its artistic director, José Luis Valenzuela, founded the company in 1985 with an ensemble of five, and those same five co-founders are still there, 41 years later. Beyond the walls of the always-busy lobby, the Center stages eight to nine productions a year, each for a six-week run, and its two-day holiday show in the cathedral downtown draws six to seven thousand people on its own. 

There are three resident companies: the Robey Theatre Company, which is African American; Artists at Play, which is Asian American; and Playwrights’ Arena, which stages the work of Los Angeles playwrights. They also provide discounted or free rehearsal space for many other local arts and community organizations. As Valenzuela notes, the Latino Theater Company, which is the largest Latino Theater in the country, feels a deep responsibility to its community beyond bringing art and culture to its doors. In this age of growing isolation and widening cultural gaps, Valenzuela knows the power of shared artistic community experiences. “It’s the idea of mental health and loneliness, which is such a crisis,” he says. “By providing programming and events that allow people to see themselves and allow people not to be alone, we want that to happen now more than ever, especially for young people.”

Initiatives That Foster Innovation 

The company prides itself on its vast slate of unique, bold initiatives that bring art and community together. From their summer youth conservatory program, which is part academic, part artistic and is taught by working professionals and is free to 32 teens each year, to their free student matinee program, their Impact Initiative which provides free subscription passes to Los Angeles Community College students, to their New Generation Initiative populated with multigenerational plays, to their newest endeavor, the Circle of Imaginistas, where seasoned playwrights mentor younger community writers whose plays are then produced at the theater. 

Every program, every initiative interconnects to build community on stage and beyond, with much of the outreach and artistic focus on the younger generation. 

“At the theatre, they’re detached from technology and our hearts connect. We laugh together, we cry together, all through this ancient form of art,” says Xavi Moreno, the company’s marketing director. 

Forty-one years in, The Latino Theater Company remains dedicated to serving its community, increasing artistic opportunities for underserved communities, all while contributing novel, thought provoking, inclusive stories.