HISTORY

 

The Vagabond Players Theater Company is a 7-year-old self-producing company of actors, directors, writers, and composers committed to the professional production of quality published and original theater works of passion, depth, and humor that offer up the various colors of the human experience in which we and our audiences all share.  The Company takes its inspiration and name from the original Vagabond Players Little Theatre company established in the American expatriate community in Paris in 1928.  Both Vagabond Players were and are aptly named: the 1928 company performed exclusively in the salons and ateliers of metropolitan Paris; the present Vagabonds mount productions in theaters, libraries, and civic halls while pursuing the search for a permanent theater home.  The Vagabond Players Theater Company, Inc. is a non-profit, California corporation organized under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code.

 

 

MISSION

 

The common thread linking every play mounted by the Company is that each sheds some insight into the human condition by presenting situations of conflict (dramatic or comedic) that matter to the characters and, if realized fully, to an audience.  The Vagabonds hail from various acting traditions, all of which are improvisational-based, and which involve actively pursuing living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, really listening to and working off each other, and going moment to unanticipated moment from an identifiable starting place to a clearly different ending place. 

Both dramas and comedies are presented.  We prefer producing original works, but also do published plays.  We invite submissions of original pieces by new or established playwrights.  Each play is reviewed by several Vagabonds, and often given an in-house reading when under serious production consideration.  This process culminates in actual formal production.
 
A production may be a full-length play, or of a set of one-acts.  The plays may have casts of eight actors, or two.  Multiple play nights may be of all dramas, or comedies, or combinations, under an umbrella title pointing out a theme tying all of the pieces together.  Runs last six-weeks, two or three evenings per weekend.
           
The Vagabonds have conducted staged readings of original works for the playwrights and audiences to review new material.  Additionally, the Company has performed readings for community groups and charitable organizations, including church groups and senior citizen centers.  As part of the Players shared commitment giving back to the community, the Company has donated all proceeds from certain performance nights from most productions to charities both within and without our industry.

 

THE VAGABONDS

 

As a self-producing theater company, all of the Vagabonds work is funded exclusively by box office proceeds, program advertisements, member dues, and donations from generous people and entities.  Self-producing describes the critical involvement of each member in every aspect of the Company's operations and productions.  The Company intentionally keeps its membership small, to maximize each actors opportunities to work, and to have a voice in the entire joint effort.  All hands participate in every aspect of pre-production, line production, art production, you name it, we do it.  Meanwhile, the Players continue our ongoing search for a permanent theater home.