The Ahmanson Theatre is one of the four main venues that comprise the Los Angeles Music Center

Los Angeles Music Center

The Music Center is one of the three largest performing arts centers in the nation. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the Music Center is home to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theater, Mark Taper Forum and Walt Disney Concert Hall...

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Through the generosity of philanthropist

Philanthropist

A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...

 Robert H. Ahmanson, construction began on March 9, 1962. The theatre opened on April 12, 1967 with a production of More Stately Mansions

More Stately Mansions

More Stately Mansions is a play by Eugene O'Neill.Originally intended to be part of a nine-play cycle entitled A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed, Mansions was an incomplete rough draft written between 1936 and 1939 that O'Neill did not want posthumously finished or produced...

starring Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...

, Arthur Hill

Arthur Hill (actor)

Arthur Edward Spence Hill was a Canadian actor best known for appearances in British and American theater, movies and television...

, and Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

. Since then, it has presented a wide variety of dramas, musicals

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

, comedies, and revivals

Revival (play)

A revival is a restaging of a stage production after its original run has closed. New material may be added. A filmed version is said to be an adaptation and requires writing of a screenplay....

 of the classics, including six world premieres of Neil Simon

Neil Simon

Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...

 plays and works by Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University...

, August Wilson

August Wilson

August Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama...

, A.R. Gurney, Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...

, John Guare

John Guare

John Guare is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body...

 and Edward Albee

Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

. The Ahmanson also has served in the capacity of co-producer for a number of Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 productions, including Amadeus

Amadeus

Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...

, Smokey Joe's Cafe

Smokey Joe's Cafe

Smokey Joe's Cafe is a musical revue showcasing 39 pop standards, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues songs written by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller...

, The Most Happy Fella

The Most Happy Fella

The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...

, and The Drowsy Chaperone

The Drowsy Chaperone

The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show won the Tony Award for Best Book and Best Score. It started as a spoof of old...

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The Ahmanson has the largest theatrical season-ticket subscription base on the West Coast

West Coast of the United States

West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...

. Its year-round season begins in early fall and lasts through late summer.
In December 2006, it presented the musical stage adaptation of the Tim Burton

Tim Burton

Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

 film Edward Scissorhands

Edward Scissorhands

Edward Scissorhands is a 1990 romantic fantasy film directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. The film shows the story of an artificial man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands. Edward is taken in by a suburban family and falls in love with their teenage daughter...

, directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne

Matthew Bourne

Matthew Bourne OBE is a British classical and contemporary ballet and dance choreographer.-Biography:Matthew Bourne was born in Hackney, London in 1960. He went to William Fitt and Sir George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London...

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Renovated in 1994, seating capacity

Seating capacity

Seating capacity refers to the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, both in terms of the physical space available, and in terms of limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats...

can be reconfigured from 1,600 to 2,100.

Ahmanson Theater Los Angeles Website