Within the midst of the devastating Eaton fireplace, a selected wood picnic desk remained absolutely intact at 2553 Truthful Oaks Ave in Altadena, Calif. This was the deal with of the microcomedy theater, Public Shows of Altadena, identified reasonably lovingly as “PDA.”
The Eaton fireplace started final Tuesday simply over three miles north from the small strip mall PDA referred to as residence. It was that evening that the 35-seat venue and its surrounding companies burned to the bottom. Apart from the picnic desk — a gathering place for performers, viewers members and PDA’s staff, earlier than and after reveals.
PDA’s co-owners Claire Woolner and Kevin Krieger are fixtures of the Los Angeles clown scene. They created PDA in 2022 as a spot to incubate their work, not understanding the huge group they’d attract nearly immediately.
“The vision came after the selection of space. We found the best use was to make it available at an affordable rate so people could make their dream come true,” Krieger mentioned. “People that are wanting to be creative for their own personal well-being and growth, not just trying to make a career out of it.”
“Altadena is home to a lot of artists, and because of the location of our theater, it allowed people to do really weird stuff,” Woolner added.
PDA’s calendar primarily featured clown reveals and workshops, although its carte blanche mentality additionally welcomed in sketch, improv, stand-up and readings. The creativity was fostered across the clock; typically reveals started as early as 8 a.m.
Bamford performing to a packed home at PDA
(Budd Diaz)
Comic Maria Bamford was one of many main gamers of the early slots, usually figuring out new hours as her audiences drank espresso. Bamford has been a champion of PDA since its inception— even earlier than its existence, for that matter.
“I drew a picture several years ago, after moving to Altadena, of my ideal comedy community: small and filled with love,” Bamford recalled. “And in true Los Angeles-vision-board-magic, Claire, Budd [Diaz] and Kevin did a massive amount of work rehabbing a strip-mall office space into a gorgeous, tiny clown theater. Ridiculously, a request from the universe in crayon was answered.”
It was PDA’s small workforce that took out the flooring, painted the partitions, put in the lights and hung the pink and inexperienced curtains. Suddenly, their titles grew to become: artists, carpenters, producers, technicians, bookers, enterprise house owners and group leaders.
“That’s what made the theater burning down the most devastating … we put our hearts and souls into turning this strip-mall space into a beautiful, little theater, and it’s gone,” Krieger mentioned.
However not if the folks will help it.
Amenities supervisor Budd Diaz created a GoFundMe to maintain staff afloat, refund these with scheduled leases, help different Altadena companies and houses and produce PDA again to its group. Donations shortly got here in from comedians akin to Bamford, Chris Fleming and Jamie Loftus, as properly viewers members, workshoppers and all these touched by the place that Bamford described as “punk in the most joyful sense of the word.”
Claire Woolner and Kevin Krieger posing on stage at PDA
(Adam Hart)
The notifications on Woolner’s telephone don’t appear to cease. “The messages I’ve been getting all say, ‘PDA gave me the courage to get onstage and start working out this new idea.’ Which is really moving for me, because that is what I want as an artist.”
Author, comic and Emmy-winning actor Alex Borstein was immediately enchanted with PDA, calling it a “raw canvas.” After placing on readings of unpublished works by her and different writers, Borstein is able to “literally show up [with] hammer and nails, if that helps,” or do her new stand-up hour “somewhere on their behalf.”
Efficiency in assist of PDA is precisely Lauren Herstik’s imaginative and prescient for her upcoming fundraiser. A tv author, Herstik is organizing a present she originated at PDA. It’s a semistaged script studying of a pilot written by Herstik that by no means developed additional.
“I’ve been reaching out to other venues around town to make it a pay-what-you-can production fundraiser, and if it works out, make it a series of fundraisers, so every couple weeks, another theater can host, and everything would go to PDA,” mentioned Herstik.
The bench outdoors of PDA nonetheless stands after the Eaton fireplace burned the constructing and surrounding space.
(Bradd Eberhard)
It’s big-hearted endeavors akin to these which have fueled Krieger and Woolner to maintain at it. Simply two days after the fireplace, Krieger was scouting spots in different northeast Los Angeles neighborhoods.
“Claire and I would love to keep teaching and keep creating space for people to create. We get to be the owners of it, but in reality it was really a community effort,” Krieger mentioned. “I am looking forward to doing it again.”
During the last couple of days, Krieger retains coming again to the identical sentiment: “Theater isn’t the space; it’s the people that come to it and make it a vibrant place to be.”
The picnic desk stays standing.