There are no wrong answers at The Garage Theatre in Long Beach.
The 20-ish-year-old community-based theater company in Downtown accepts any and all ideas rooted in passion and excitement, and most recently, puppets.
“We lean toward the absurd and strange,” said founding member and managing director Eric Hamme. “We are not afraid to do what some people might consider shocking or provocative as long as the story is good.”
For the last show of the “20-ish anniversary season,” co-director Rob Young returned to his roots. As a graduate from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Young refers to Shakespeare as a consistent employer.
“Shakespeare gave me more jobs than anybody for a long time,” Young said.
The co-director got his start at The Garage Theatre through Shakespeare classic “Richard III” in 2011 and “met everyone there and really found a family,” Young said. The theater gave him an opportunity to hone whatever skills he wanted, as well as a place to keep his tools for stage creations.
Young and co-director Matthew Vincent Julian are undertaking perhaps the Bard’s most introspective production: Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Puppet Play With People. The production explores themes of will, keeping one’s word and the intrigue of love through local actors and muppet-like puppets that were handmade by Young and costume designer Maria Guerrero.
The play follows the King of Navarre and his knights who ward off all life’s pleasures—including love—immediately before meeting Princess J’aime and her glamorous puppet entourage. Hilarity ensues as the characters grapple with their own desires and wills.
“Because of the stuff we do, we have the freedom to do whatever we want to do. People kind of expect to be shocked so it’s really nice to have that freedom. Whether it’s a great show or it’s a turd, people always feel welcome there.”
Eric Hamme, managing director of The Garage Theatre
There is also a French lord played by a large fluffy crane and a country “girl” working at the palace whose character is portrayed by a puppet chicken and lines include insights such as “bawk” and “bawk-bawk.”
“This whole process has just been if we think it’s funny, or the room thinks it’s funny, go for it,” Young said. “Each person on the team has come up with a joke and been excited…they’d show up the next day with stuff that they’d done outside of rehearsal because they’re excited to show the rest of the cast and make people laugh. It’s just been a very uplifting process.”
The cozy, intimate setting of The Garage Theatre, sandwiched by an income tax services building on the left and a mariscos restaurant on the right, is only complimented by the lively, eccentric cast and shows that are produced in the small building.
From ‘just seven friends’ to Seventh Street storefront
After 20 years of managing The Garage Theatre in Long Beach, Eric Hamme was tired. As one of the founding members of one of the most independent theaters in the city, he had spent decades crafting set designs, directing plays and balancing the theater’s finances.
The ever-persistent urge to grow The Garage Theatre—bigger shows, bigger audience, bigger impact—was draining on the managing director, and trying to expand upon the theater’s presence was slowly becoming “a burden instead of a joy.”
“It was fantastic, but when it was over it was like all shows you do, you just tear it down and move on to the next,” Hamme said. “Nothing changed.”
Hamme was among the original group of seven friends and founders who met in the Orange Coast College’s theater department and started The Garage Theatre in the late ‘90s. He was the main character in the first show they produced out of a friend’s garage, leading an army of evil eggs and singing a duet with a hand puppet to a sold-out crowd of a dozen.
In that garage in 1996, in front of the sprawled-out lawn chairs and college students cheering and drinking pints of beer, Hamme, Jamie Sweets, Matthew Anderson and four of their friends realized they had a distinctly intriguing product.
“We were not only seven people running a theater company, we were just seven friends,” Hamme said. “It was really kind of easy in that we didn’t have an artistic director. If someone had something that fit the aesthetic and they were passionate about it, it was an automatic yes.”
The group would spend the next few years putting on traveling shows throughout the city, wherever they could find the space and an audience. Early days included a two-night play in a secret underground club in Long Beach before the reviews came out—mostly positive—which prompted the fire marshall to shut them down.
“The Garage, to a lot of us, is an excuse for us to all see each other. We’re gonna hang out anyways and we all do, and then it just happens to be at a theater too. And might as well add a fog machine.”
Rob Young, co-director of Love’s Labour’s Lost
It would be several more years and failed locations before The Garage Theatre found its permanent home on Seventh Street in Downtown Long Beach in 2005. The theater prides itself in creating the same welcoming environment they were founded on.
‘Whether it’s a great show or a turd,’ the show goes on
Keeping in its roots to provide affordable, independent, non-commercial productions, The Garage Theatre members despise anything that is considered “high art, intellectual, expensive and elitist.”
“We found there’s stuff out there that’s accessible and cool and punk rock in a way, to present it in an intimate space,” Hamme said. “A lot of times you walk into a theater and they treat you like you’re lucky to be there. We’re nothing without our audience. Without them, we’d just be crazy people doing shows.”
The theater doesn’t have an artistic director, in order to allow “the absurd and strange” to prosper in front of its 7th Street patrons, mostly made up of 18-to-35-year-olds. There are no official or designated seats, as it changes depending on how immersed or separated from a show a director wants the audience to feel.
“Community Theater is a passion of mine,” Young said. “I think it’s important to have accessible art—accessible to patrons as well as people trying to learn the craft…I’ve seen a lot of people come in very green that have continued on to find professional work as stage managers or lighting designers.”
Attendees are allowed to bring and enjoy their own drinks, and there are hardly any rules governing performances, Hamme said. The goal is to appeal to the kind of people who wouldn’t normally be able to afford live performances.
The Garage Theatre’s current puppet production includes constant ad-libs, audience participation and a Shania Twain ballad.
“Because of the stuff we do, we have the freedom to do whatever we want to do. People kind of expect to be shocked so it’s really nice to have that freedom,” Hamme said. “Whether it’s a great show or it’s a turd, people always feel welcome there.”
The Garage has a little more than a dozen consistent company members and no set hierarchy. Everyone is encouraged to lean into what they enjoy, and roles are thrust upon those willing to step up at a moment’s notice. Young had his first taste as stage director for “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and said he enjoyed the “adventure.”
“The Garage, to a lot of us, is an excuse for us to all see each other,” Young said. “We’re gonna hang out anyways and we all do, and then it just happens to be at a theater too. And might as well add a fog machine.”
Surviving COVID ‘lit a fire’ under Garage Theatre members
Like every other live venue, The Garage Theater was forced to lower its curtain during the pandemic, which was a welcome relief for the co-founder, for a little while at least.
“I can’t speak for everybody, but for me personally, it was a good thing,” Hamme said. “I really enjoyed the break. We had been going nonstop for 20 years, and all of a sudden you have a career, a wife, a family…having a couple years to step back and take a break was nice.”
The Garage Theatre, a longtime community staple, was faced with the possibility of shutting down for good by the end of 2020. When the theater was nearly out of money, Hamme and the small remaining group of founders looked to the community they had been entertaining for 20 years and asked for help. They held a fundraiser with the goal of $10,000, “a lot of money in our world,” Hamme said.
The response was an unexpected $25,000 raised to keep The Garage Theatre alive.
“You work on something and you get caught up in your own little bubble and you’re doing it for the community and the company as a whole,” Hamme said. “We never really thought of it, but it was a beautiful feeling for the community to say, ‘You’re important to us, don’t go away,’ and it lit a fire for us, and we felt an obligation and a passion.”
The Garage Theatre is wrapping up its final shows for the remainder of the 2022 season, with just eight performances remaining. Shakespeare’s existential crisis of love versus responsibility receives an eccentric update in “Love’s Labour’s Lost: A Puppet Play with People.”
“It really started with us just joking around about, ‘Wouldn’t that be funny like Muppet Show-style with people falling in love with puppets, puppets falling in love with puppets,” Young said. “And then we came back the next day and it was still funny.”
Residents can catch the last of these shows at The Garage Theatre at 251 E Seventh Street Thursday nights through Saturday nights from Dec. 1 to Dec. 17. Productions begin at 8 p.m. and single tickets for general admission are $25; for students, teachers, military veterans and seniors, tickets are $18.
Patrons can purchase two tickets for $12.50 each on Twofer Sutherland Thursdays with the code “twofer.” Closing night tickets are $30 which includes a post-show reception with food and drinks. Tickets can be purchased at The Garage Theatre’s website.
