Alden Ehrenreich needs to be drained. He’s simply returned from Italy after about three months of filming throughout Europe. He’s off to the Philippines for his subsequent movie tomorrow. However as he sits underneath a blooming citrus tree on the entrance of his new theater, he’s overcome with power. He might rhapsodize about stay theater for hours if you happen to let him.
The actor, who starred in his first movie — Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro” — whereas nonetheless in highschool, simply needs to play.
After greater than a decade within the business, he longed to discover a area to do exactly that. He yearned for the uninhibited creative exploration of his late teenagers and early 20s when he was part of theater teams with associates.
“That sense of freedom and play is kind of our birthright. It’s innate to us,” he mentioned. “It’s sort of artists’ job, in a way, to fight for and protect that freedom.”
So he purchased a historic substation in Cypress Park, decided to make it an inventive hub the place he and others might get again to youthful creativity that’s typically “quelled” by business expectations, Ehrenreich mentioned. Huron Station Playhouse, which celebrated its mushy opening final fall, has turn out to be his “pride and joy.”
The L.A. native had a marathon 12 months in 2023 — showing in “Cocaine Bear,” “Fair Play,” finest image winner “Oppenheimer” and writing, directing and starring within the quick movie “Shadow Brother Sunday” — and he’s not slowing down anytime quickly.
In only a few months, he’ll seem in Disney+’s Marvel miniseries “Ironheart.” He says he not solely liked his character, however his collaborators too. He’s additionally set to star reverse fellow “Star Wars” alum Daisy Ridley in “The Last Resort,” seem within the horror movie “Weapons” and star alongside Helen Mirren in “Switzerland,” an adaptation of the play by the identical title.
With a strenuous work and journey schedule, Ehrenreich mentioned he felt the necessity for an inventive residence base. When he got here throughout a constructing that predates the Hollywood signal, he knew he discovered the right area to reinvigorate himself and different Angeleno artists.
“This has been extremely helpful for me, just psychologically,” he mentioned.
“You end up living this very itinerant existence. And this,” he mentioned, motioning to the blades of grass outdoors the theater’s entrance he’d been twiddling with whereas talking, “could not be more, not that. To be able to put love and attention and growth into something that continues to be there is really helpful.”
Alden Ehrenreich mentioned he hopes to direct a play studying at Huron Station Playhouse in between main movies.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
Ehrenreich needed a spot the place artwork might be produced with out the stress of business success.
“What business does, understandably, is focus on results. ‘How much money is this going to make? Who’s going to see it? Blah, blah, blah.’ And when you’re focused on results, you can’t really play because every gesture, every move that you make has this baggage on top of it,” he mentioned. “The true magic and joy of these things doesn’t always survive the infrastructure of the business side.”
That being mentioned, Ehrenreich has appeared in a variety of big-budget initiatives that had been topic to that business stress, together with his starring position as Han Solo within the 2018 “Star Wars” prequel, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which underperformed on the field workplace. However he appreciates each the main studio manufacturing aspect of his resume and the theater aspect.
“It’s harder than it’s ever been nowadays to only do one [genre or style] for a lot of different reasons,” he mentioned. “The most important thing is that you still get to use the muscle of the thing that you really care the most about. It also is possible in some of those commercial environments, when it’s helmed by somebody who has a really personal vision, for those things to be genuinely creative.”
One other a part of his mission to “reenvision L.A. as a theater city” is to make Huron Station Playhouse a watering gap for artists. After play readings final fall that launched the theater, solid members and theatergoers mingled and conversed on the patio outdoors the constructing. Ehrenreich mentioned this can be a essential a part of how he hopes the Playhouse will set up a collaborative creative neighborhood in what can typically really feel like an remoted metropolis.
The patio of Huron Station Playhouse capabilities as a gathering area for artists after play readings, with the celebration lasting hours after curtain name.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
“A lot of actors only meet each other at parties thrown by Hollywood entities, agencies or companies. I could meet someone who’s the most exciting artist to me in the world. The conversation we’re gonna have there is not gonna lead to the great American novel. It’s just not,” he mentioned. “I just always felt kind of hungry for that. And I think in L.A., it has to be a little bit more of a fight to carve out that ground.”
When he started trying to find business actual property in L.A., Ehrenreich mentioned this was the primary place that got here up on Google. The identical one that, years earlier, had carried out in unique performs — written by associates — underneath a building gentle in an deserted home, had lastly discovered a everlasting area to forge the theatrical hub he’d been dreaming of for his hometown. He received the keys to the Huron Substation in 2021.
The Huron Substation was in-built 1906 in Cypress Park to transform the Los Angeles Railway Yellow Vehicles to the next voltage. A relic in a city the place not a lot is over a century previous, the constructing nonetheless maintains the unique brickwork, though some spots bear the remnants of a fireplace within the ‘80s.
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The Huron Substation was built in 1906 and the original brickwork is still intact. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
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The chandelier hangs from the theater’s 45-foot ceiling. (Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
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Ehrenreich mentioned he “belabored over the different details” of the restroom area “for a long time.” (Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
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A spacious backyard greets guests on the entrance of Huron Station Playhouse. (Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
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Ehrenreich mentioned the lights within the restroom have been repurposed from lamps in an previous division retailer. (Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
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Ehrenreich needs the theater to be a watering gap for artists so there’s ample seating within the outside area. (Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
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The Huron Substation is a historic cultural monument in L.A. (Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
The 45-foot ceiling and uncovered wooden beams could be the celebs of the area if it weren’t for the large chandelier lighting the principle flooring.
Ehrenreich introduced in furnishings and decor with the assistance of his mother, inside designer Sari Ehrenreich. A lot of the constructing was properly maintained and didn’t require a lot work, however they added a restroom by the doorway the place Ehrenreich and his collaborators received artistic, crafting an intricate tile design on the ground and putting in vintage lamps from an previous division retailer.
A spacious mezzanine sits above the stage and seating space and it’ll perform as a shared workspace for artists. Ehrenreich envisions a spot the place writers can ask friends for assist with a script or toss round pitches and workshop concepts in a protected and welcoming atmosphere.
Downstairs, there isn’t a fastened stage so administrators can select the place the viewers shall be in relation to the actors. The shut proximity between performers and patrons creates a way of intimacy that’s tough to duplicate, mentioned Julie Cohn, the manager director of Huron Station Playhouse.
“There’s an electricity, first of all, being in a space like this, but an electricity in being this close to an actor who is really going through something right in front of you,” Cohn mentioned. “Nothing is polished about it, it’s super raw and really electric in a way that not only I’ve missed, but I think everyone has missed.”
The mushy opening of the theater final fall featured 4 readings of up to date performs, and every efficiency performed to a full home.
(M.Ok. Sadler)
Those that attended the primary performances on the theater — readings of the performs “Gloria,” “Intimate Apparel,” “Cock” and “You Got Older” — had been handled to a novel expertise with solid members, together with Stephanie Hsu, Alia Shawkat, Chris Perfetti and Ehrenreich.
The readings had been offered out weeks prematurely. Whereas that early buzz was thrilling for Ehrenreich and his workforce on the Playhouse, he mentioned it additionally validated his idea that Angelenos had been simply as hungry as he was for an intimate fashion of theater just like the wealthy off-Broadway scene in New York.
“I definitely feel that need for people to be together. I need it,” he mentioned. “I’m the audience member that I’m trying to speak to in certain ways.”
Alden Ehrenreich and author and producer Julie Cohn mentioned they hope Huron Station Playhouse will deliver off-Broadway-style theater to the West Coast. “L.A. is on the brink of a theater renaissance,” Cohn mentioned.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
All of this ties again to Ehrenreich’s deeply rooted love for theater. He’s a real scholar of the humanities, rattling off actors he admires and recommending a biography he’s at the moment studying on director Mike Nichols.
Ehrenreich’s first efficiency in a play — a manufacturing of “Our Town” by which he performed George and had his first kiss at age 13 — lit a hearth underneath him. When he lived in New York, he noticed an off-Broadway manufacturing of the present seven instances. “That play has a certain magic to it about appreciating life, as we’re living it, that still completely bowls me over,” he mentioned.
However don’t anticipate to see Thornton Wilder‘s 1938 Pulitzer Prize winner at Huron Station Playhouse. Ehrenreich and Cohn agreed they’d give attention to up to date performs at the beginning of the theater’s life, straying away from classics or summary titles.
Ehrenreich mentioned he needs to highlight materials that even non-theater buffs will recognize and join with, and spotlight sturdy characters to encourage shifting performances.
The following studying will come on the finish of Could for the play “Killing and Dying,” directed by Tony nominee Anne Kauffman and co-produced by Ari Aster’s manufacturing firm, Sq. Peg. Subsequent, screenwriting and playwriting circles will kick off, and the Playhouse workforce plans to ramp up different programming for younger artists. Between film and TV shoots, Ehrenreich hopes to sit within the director’s chair for a studying himself.
Whereas Ehrenreich might — and gladly would — communicate in regards to the theater’s objectives and his desires for the area at size, he and the crew at Huron Station Playhouse appear to sum it up completely within the “house values” posted outdoors the doorway, slightly below the plaque designating the positioning an L.A. historic cultural monument. These values are: Be current. Have enjoyable. Deal with each particular person with kindness and respect. Give all of it you bought.
And lastly — imagine in artwork.
