VIDEO: San Gabriel Mission Playhouse Tour

Producer-Director Walter Dominguez recently visited one of Los Angeles’ important historic theaters, the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse, and recorded this video mini-tour.

Located in the LA suburb of San Gabriel (the first European settlement in the region, established in 1771), the beautiful neo-colonial Mission-Style theater was built in the 1920’s to showcase the spectacular production of John Steven McGroarty’s pageant-drama, the Mission Play.

For the Mission Play, McGroarty took the then-untold story of the 22 California missions, built by the labor of California’s Native Americans under the supervision of Spanish Catholic Franciscan brothers (headed by the indefatigable Father Junipero Serra, who is the main protagonist of the Mission Play), and made it into California’s first theatrical hit.

Premiering in April of 1912, with a cast of over three hundred actors, dancers, singers and musicians, the play was one of the most viewed performances in theatrical history, seen by nearly two million people over its decades-long run. A movement is afoot to revive the play here, at the theater built to present it.