TROJAN DAY GUIDE
24th Street Theatre gives back art, care
A local gem unknown to many students, the theater provides an artistic outlet in South Central.
By DAVID RENDON
The 24th Street Theatre is anything but a normal theater. The theater has been embraced by the community and now it’s more like a family, attending funerals and supporting local vendors, executive director Jay McAdams said.
There’s no template for what the 24th Street Theatre is, and people certainly won’t find it in the mission statement, he added.
The theatre was founded in 1997 by McAdams, Debbie Devine, Jon White-Spunner and Stephanie Shroyer, a professor of theatre practice in acting. From the beginning, the group knew it wanted to make the theater about the community. 24th Street Theatre is the type of place to spend its Saturday trying to catch a stray dog to return it to its owner.
“We’re so deeply involved, I’ve put myself between fighting [people experiencing homelessness] to break them up,” McAdams said. “I’ve given people jumpstarts with dead batteries out in the street.”
24th Street Theatre operates a lot like a venn diagram with theater, community and arts education, McAdams said. When McAdams and the other founders founded the space, they made it their mission to improve the community, and they felt they could make a difference, he said.
“Our very first meeting was [with] a kid named Victor,” McAdams said. “The door to the street was open… and this kid came and stopped, he was 11, and he yelled and said, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ … And in talking to him, we realize he doesn’t even know what a play is.”
One of the theater’s biggest events is its Día de los Muertos celebration, said community program manager Abel Alvarado. His first impression of the theater was actually through attending the event himself in 2021.
“It was really impressive because there was no charge to get in, yet the production value was so high,” Alvarado said. “And there were so many people here. … There was a huge stage with world-class performers and it really felt like the community of Los Angeles that celebrates Día de los Muertos was coming together.”
Gianna DiGiulio, a junior majoring in public relations and the 24th PR and marketing intern, highly recommended the Día de los Muertos event to students.
“USC students should know about it because there’s speakers, there’s performers, there’s a little marketplace [where] you can buy things, and it’s just a really cool event,” DiGiulio said. “It’s just really cool to see people from the community just come out and to know that a small theater is putting it on.”
The theater is always advocating for its community, McAdams said. When the Trump administration was in power, when United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement vans were doing neighborhood sweeps, 24th Street Theatre ensured that community members didn’t feel threatened during the Día de los Muertos performance and that the event was safe for everyone in the community.
“One of the concerns we raised with council offices and said, ‘Listen, you have to talk to [the Los Angeles Police Department] for us and assure us there’s not going to be any harassment [and] nobody’s asking for documentation,’” McAdams said.
At 24th Street Theatre, Spanish is welcomed, even outside of the shows performed in Spanish, McAdams said: English-language shows are often accompanied by Spanish supertitles.
“It really gives us a hub of creativity where people are allowed to express themselves, people who normally wouldn’t be given a chance to express themselves,” Alvarado said. “Latinos comprise about 52% of the population here in Los Angeles, and therefore Spanish is the language that we hear. It’s in the very name of our city and it’s celebrated here.”
The theater has had a long history with USC. Robert Scales, former dean of the School of Dramatic Arts, convinced the founders to look at the area to build a theater, McAdams said. Scales also helped by getting the theater a $30,000 grant.
USC has continued to show the theater support by helping to fund its after-school program that it provides to the community for free, McAdams said. USC is one of the program’s biggest partners.
McAdams said five SDA deans have signed on as Good Neighbor campaign partners, supporting the 24th Street Theatre’s school and after-school program. The “After ‘Cool” program as they call it provides after school activities taught by professional actors for an entire school year, McAdams said.
The after-school programs are considered, like everything else, art, McAdams added.
“If we’re teaching 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, oftentimes, we bring a professional musician in to score the class,” McAdams said. “We can get the kids to feel better and to feel more if we’re telling a story and there’s a little tinkle on the keys in the background, pulling their heartstrings like film scoring. Why would we not do that?”
Currently, the theater has a show every Saturday in September in its Saturday Explorer series, DiGiulio said. Every weekend, a different group of performers puts on a small showcase. The shows begin at 2 p.m., and tickets for the general public are $10 and $2.40 for North University Park residents.
The theater also provides programs meant to help high schoolers learn life skills not taught in schools, McAdams said.
“We’re teaching them to stand up and speak up and use their voices and give them confidence,” McAdams said. “We teach them how to do job interviews, teach them how to wear a tie, old school stuff, but stuff they’re not getting anywhere else these days.”
The theater’s outreach doesn’t stop at children, as the staff also help older adults in the area with tasks that can be too difficult for them to handle on their own.
“We literally get them groceries [and] take them to doctor’s appointments,” McAdams said. “I just checked one out of the hospital this week … those are not things theaters do.”
For a while, the theater provided people experiencing homelessness with clothing, even if that meant pulling from the costume shop, McAdams said. The theater also serves as a place where individuals experiencing homelessness can receive their mail.
Most USC students don’t seem to know about 24th Street Theatre, DiGiulio said. When she tells other students she works there, she’s often met with questions like, “What’s that?”
“If you want to go see a live show on a weekend and it’s chill and casual, but you want to see live art, I think it’d be a fun thing that USC students should know about,” DiGiulio said.
In Alvarado’s eyes, the 24th Street Theatre gives South L.A. youth the opportunity to see different paths for themselves.
“There’s a space here that is telling young people, that is telling the community, ‘You’re worthy of fine art,’” Alvarado said. “‘You are worthy of expressing yourself. You are worthy of telling your story because your story is also valid.’ And this theater has done that for 27 years.”
