Our Mission
Berkeley Playhouse’s mission is to create theater and programs that engage, ignite, and celebrate diverse Bay Area audiences through thriving educational programming, a MainStage season, community outreach, and a commitment to the development of new family musicals. In support of our mission, we maintain and enhance the historic Julia Morgan Theater, a 115-year-old historical landmark. A commitment to community, diversity, inclusion, and empowerment is at the heart of our work.
Our Two Divisions
MainStage Season
Berkeley Playhouse’s MainStage Season features professional musicals performed on the Julia Morgan stage from September to June. Berkeley Playhouse’s musicals range from Broadway favorites and family-friendly classics to provocative storytelling and contemporary reimaginings, ensuring an unforgettable theatrical experience for all ages.
- Four high-quality productions each season, most running for five to six weekends
- New Works program that infuses new life into the family music theater repertory
- Outreach programs to schools and community organizations
Theater Arts Education
Berkeley Playhouse provides classes, camps, and performance training in acting, singing, dancing, and technical theater. Students in our programs receive training from the best Bay Area teaching artists – many of them directors or performers in our MainStage Season shows.
- Camps & Classes
- Beginning, Intermediate and skills-based classes in acting, singing, dancing and technical theater
- Youth Productions
- Full-length productions performed on our Julia Morgan stage
About Berkeley Playhouse
Our History and Founder
Berkeley Playhouse was founded in 2007 by local artist and educator, Elizabeth McKoy (pictured), who had a vision of a diverse and inclusive theater space to foster connection and community. After originally creating an arts education organization housed in the theater in 2000, in 2007 the founders then secured the Julia Morgan Theater (originally St. John’s Presbyterian built in 1910), as the playhouse’s home – honoring Julia Morgan’s original vision of creating a space where people could gather and commune.
Berkeley Playhouse productions reach a diverse Bay Area audience of over 28,000 patrons annually, and our education wing serves over 1,600 children per year through classes, camps, and YouthStage. Well over forty thousand people pass through our hallways in a given year, whether as actors, designers, staff members, theater patrons, students, or teaching artists.
Berkeley Playhouse’s theater education programs typically serve over 1600 young people annually. Berkeley Playhouse classes and camps programming offers opportunities for young people to experience theater for the first time or to continue on in further developing their theatrical skill building in a classroom format.
YouthStage, an audition and performance-based program provides an extraordinary opportunity for 368 youth to learn alongside professional directors, musicians, vocal coaches, and choreographers resulting in a full length musical production.
