No Place Like Home: PCPA

Posted: Sep 2, 2010 5:50 PM by Jeanette Trompeter
Updated: Sep 3, 2010 10:28 AM

If you like live theatre, you don't have to travel to big cities for some of the best.

For more than 45 years, PCPA, or the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts has been bringing great actors and great theatre to Santa Maria, and Solvang.

And if you pay a visit, you'll see the PCPA also provides good proof there's no place like home.

t's rehearsal time at Allan Hancock College. Last minute run-throughs of an original play written just for the PCPA. Invierno opened last Friday and is a central coast twist of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale.

"It's about love, and connection to the earth, and faith, and then I think of the loss of that, all of those things. And the consequences of that loss." says Richard Gallegos, an actor at PCPA. Gallegos is an alum of PCPA who went on to establish a career in acting. "I mean you don't get to work in spaces like this down in L.A. unless you're at the Taper, or other big venues, so it's a priviledge. "

He's back on the central coast to play one of the leads in Invierno. "Ithink Consequence is a big word for me. And then another word we've been using a lot is redemption. It's about redemtion. Is that a possibility.and if it is, what is the journey to get there."

Jose Cruz Gonzalez wrote Invierno, which means Winter in Spanish. "I wanted to tell it about the central coast. The story takes place here in this community."

Invierno,

incorporates the history of this place we all call home now. It's set in an 1830's version of the central coast. But the drama that unfolds is timeless. "The history of CA is very rich we have had always a mixture of cultures coming together a fusion and clash of cultures, always taking place here on the land and so I thought that lent itself to Inveirno." says Cruz Gonzalez.

There is a risk to staging original screenplays, when classics have proven great draws for PCPA for more than 45 years. But it is part of what makes this company so special. If no one will take risks on new stories, what then will be the classic for actors to perform centuries from now?

PCPA acts as a conservatory a school for theatrics. But it is also a professional regional theatre, that draws great talent from elsewhere,and graduates a steady stock of up and comers as well. Do the names Robin Williams or Kathy Bates ring a bell?

here are tons are tons of actors who people may not know, but they're out there doing it, they're out there editing movies, or they're working in small theatred. Or they've founded children's theatres." Gallegos points out.

The PCPA offers a commitment to the arts in a time when that's harder and harder to find. And in the process, it offers up some great theatre, right in our own backyard. It's another reason, there's no place like home.