ENTERTAINMENT BY ACTORS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28793, 14 January 1959, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENT BY ACTORS

Performances At La Jolla

First-class entertainment provided by leading Hollywood actors in a high school auditorium at La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, which at present has no proper theatre, was described by a resident of La Jolla, Miss B. L. Shoop, who arrived in Christchurch yesterday after a two weeks tour of the rest of the Dominion.

"The plays are presented by The Actors’ Playhouse, which was formed about 10 years ago by a resident of La Jolla, the actor Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer and Miss Dorothy MacGuire ” said Miss Shoop. “About five plays are presented each summer, each running for two weeks, with the leading parts being taken by prominent actors. Last season we had Thornton Wilder’s ‘The Skin of our Teeth,’ which starred Eartha Kitt and not very long ago Jose Ferrer played in ‘Edwin Booth’ which is now running in New York.”

Miss Shoop said that interested persons in the community were at present working to get a new theatre-arts building established. ‘‘The capacity houses for the Playhouse indicate the need for a proper theatre.” At La Jolla is the world famous Scripp’s Institute of Oceanography with a graduate science school. At present the University of California is preparing to build a new university campus there. Arriving in the Mariposa on December 30, Miss Shoop and a companion from Chicago have visited most of the main tourist resorts in the Dominion. They returned to Christchurch yesterday from Milford Sound.